
Class 

Book., V A 
Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE WAR 

AND 

THE NEW AGE 



BY 

WILLIS MASON WEST 

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND HEAD OF THE 

DEPARTMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY 

OF MINNESOTA 



o*Kc 



ALLYN and BACON 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 



H5^ 



•Wf 



COPYRIGHT. 1919, 
BY WILLIS MASON WEST 



NOV 14- 1919 



NorfoooB ^rf0s 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A535706 



FOREWORD 

A record of the World War as early as this must be incom- 
plete and more or less marked by positive errors. Still I think 
it worth while to put a brief survey at once into the hands of 
American students, without waiting for the fuller light that 
future years will bring. The war has aroused in high-school 
boys and girls a splendid fervor for freedom and democracy. 
The magnificent story of America's part in that war, however 
imperfectly told, should give food to nourish and harden that 
impulsive fervor into intelligent and lasting resolve. 

I acknowledge here my very great debt to my friend and 
former colleague, William Stearns Davis. Through his kind- 
ness I have been enabled to read in manuscript, and to make 
free use of, the admirable chapter on the campaigns of the war 
that is to appear in the new edition of his Roots of the War. 

Willis Mason West. 

Windago Farm, 
August 1, 1919. 



1U 



CONTENTS 



Introduction — Yesterday and To-day . 

CHAPTER 

I Prussian Autocracy and Militarism 

II Making "Alliances" for Peace 

III The Balkans 

IV Germany Wills the War 
V The First Year, 1914 

VI The Second Year, 1915 

VII The Third Year, 1916 

VIII The Fourth Year, 1917 

IX The Last Year, 1918 

X War Efficiency of a Democracy 

XI The World League and New Europe 

XII Healing Forces .... 



PAGE 

1 

2 

9 

13 

22 
37 
43 
55 
59 
71 
82 
92 
106 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

YESTEKDAY AND TO-DAY 

The transition from one era to another is not seen clearly as 
a rule until long after. We talk glibly now of the beginning 
of Modern history, or of the Renaissance ; but the men who 
lived in the year 400 a.d., or 1300, were not many of them 
at that time aware of unusual change. To-day, however, as 
never before in human history, old institutions and customs and 
ideas are visibly tottering and sliding into ruin, and new 
arrangements in society and government are springing into 
life. Before our eyes, the world is passing into a new age. 

The event that especially marks the end of the old era is the 
World War of 1914-1918. That war discredited the old balance- 
of-power theory, the age-long system of military preparedness 
by hostile groups of allied nations, as the best safeguard of 
world peace ; and, indirectly, it overthrew autocracy in govern- 
ment and infinitely weakened autocracy in industry. It proved 
a war for democracy and for peace. And the event that es- 
pecially marks the opening of the new era is the adoption of the 
plan for a League of Nations by the Peace Congress of 1919. 
These two mighty events, with closely related movements, are 
the theme of this small volume. 



CHAPTER I 



How 
Prussia 
found profit 



German 
Liberals, 
too, accept 
militarism 
for its profits 



The German 
Empire an 
autocracy 



PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM — THE 
TWIN MONSTERS THAT THREATENED THE "WORLD 

The national industry of Prussia is war. — Mikabeau. 

Every student knows how Bismarck, supported by the 
divine-right monarch, William I of Prussia, forged and re- 
fashioned the Prussian army in 1861-1864. Bismarck did this 
by overriding the Prussian constitution for four years, against 
the valiant opposition of the Prussian parliament. At any 
moment, if the King had weakened, or if revolution had begun, 
the Liberals would have sent Bismarck to the scaffold — as 
they constantly threatened. Bismarck knew that he must 
show his new tool profitable quickly ; and ruthlessly and trickily 
he forced war against Denmark in 1864 and against Austria 
in 1866. 

These wars doubled Prussia in size and wealth, and made 
her mistress of Germany. To their shame, the old Prussian 
Liberals accepted this dazzling bribe : since militarism and 
autocracy had proven profitable, they ceased to oppose and be- 
gan to applaud. Then in 1870-1871, Bismarck crushed France, 
and made Germany, so long weak and despised, the mightiest 
force in European politics. And, to their shame, German 
Liberals accepted Prussianism greedily for the sake of these 
profits. 

The German Empire, which lasted from 1871 to 1918, was 
Bismarck's work as the product of these wars. It was a federal 
state, but not a " free " state. Its substates were mostly 
monarchies, and the greatest of them, Prussia, equal to three 
fifths of all, was virtually a divine-right autocracy. The King 
of Prussia was ex-officio Emperor ; and his autocratic power 

2 



PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 3 

in Prussia went far of itself toward making him an autocrat in 
the Empire. There was a federal parliament, chosen by man- 
hood suffrage, but that body was little more than a debating 
society. 

The imperial autocracy was frugal, and claimed to be paternal. 
It made justice easy to secure ; it guarded against food adultera- 
tion — before most other countries awoke to this need ; and 
in other ways it cared for the public health and material com- 
fort. 

But alongside this watchful paternalism, there were grievous 
faults. Germany had been made by violence and fraud, and 
the result showed in a spirit of brutal militarism, in police rule, 
and in the predominance of the methods of the drill-sergeant 
in private life. There was little security for personal rights. 
Trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of public meetings, 
and free speech existed in only a limited degree. 

The Kaiser (Emperor) , head of the government and of the Kaiser Wil- 
army, claimed obedience as of divine right. This was pre- helm n > 
eminently true of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to the throne 
in 1888. As a youth he had been a great admirer of Bismarck, 
who, as Chancellor, was still guiding German policy ; but it 
soon became plain that the two men were each too masterful 
to work together. In 1890, the Kaiser curtly dismissed the old 
Chancellor from office, and from that time to the end he himself 
was supposed to control the policy of the Empire. William 
repeatedly stated the divine-right theory in as striking a form as 
ever did James I of England or Louis XIV of France two or three 
centuries ago. " On me, as German Emperor," he told his 
soldiers, " the spirit of God has descended. I am His sword and 
His vice-regent." " All-Highest " was a recognized form of 
address for the Emperor. And the phrase ironically attributed 
to him, — " Me and Gott," — is no great exaggeration of the 
patronizing tone in which he often referred to the Almighty as 
a partner — as in an address at Berlin in 1901 : " We shall 
conquer, even though we be surrounded by enemies ; for there 
lives a powerful ally, the old, good God in heaven, who, ever 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



since the time of the Great Elector, has always been on our 
side." 
The junkers This autocracy was upheld most of all by the landed squires, 
or junkers. Says Dr. Davis (Roots of the War, 188), — "A 
typical junker was the owner of a large landed property with a 
picturesque and uncomfortable ancient schloss (castle) dominat- 
ing a village or town, where peasant children scrambled with 
pigs and chickens in the great dungheaps before the houses. 
He might come to enjoy city life. . . . He might reform his 
agricultural methods. . . . None the less he remained heart 
and soul a country aristocrat . . . accustomed to curse his 
inferiors, to cane his servants, and to despise all who lived by 
trade." 

This class furnished the officers of the army. For most of 
them, indeed, the army was the only possible career. Pay was 
pitifully small, and the nobles were poor. But the officer's 
social standing made it easy for him to find a wife among the 
daughters of wealthy merchants. No officer, however, could 
make such a marriage until a committee of higher officers had 
approved the bride — and the dower which was to atone for her 
ignoble blood. 

The autocracy had one other pillar The junkers were 
largely Prussian and rural. But after 1870 Germany began 
to grow into a city Germany. The " industrial revolution," 
the factory system, which had grown up in England before 1800 
and in France by 1825, did not begin to make headway in Ger- 
many until nearly 1870. Then, indeed, manufactures and 
trade grew by leaps — aided by the coal and iron of Alsace- 
Lorraine and by subsidies from the huge war indemnity just 
then robbed of France. Science became the servant of manu- 
factures as it had not before been in any country. Especially 
was chemistry applied successfully to industries like the 
manufacture of dyes — which became practically a German 
monopoly. The whole artisan class, too, were trained to 
" efficiency " in trade schools, — which were distinctly class 
schools, suited on this German plan to an undemocratic land 



PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 5 

only, in which the son of an artisan must look for no " higher " 
station than his father. 

All this meant a tremendous growth of cities. Hamburg 
grew from 350,000 people in 1870 to 1,000,000 in 1910; Berlin 
from 820,000 to 2,000,000 ; Essen from 50,000 to 300,000 ; while 
many wholly new centers of trade appeared where had been 
only farming hamlets. The population of the Empire doubled 
in these forty years, and all this increase was a city increase — 
which meant that the old city population was multiplied four- 
fold. Along with this change, there appeared a new figure in 
German life, the princely manufacturing capitalist. After 1880, 
the thousands of this class took their place — alongside the 
junker nobility — as a chief support of German autocracy with 
a vivid expectation of favor to be received in form of special 
privileges. 1 

The junker and the capitalist made public opinion ; but the The Prus- 
autocracy had also its physical arm. After 1866, the Prussian sianarm y 
army system was extended over all Germany. The funda- 
mental principle was the universal obligation of all males to 
serve. The army was the armed nation. At twenty each man 
was supposed to enter the ranks for two years' active service. 
For five years more he was a member of the " active reserves," 
with two months in camp each year. These reserves were to 
be called out for regular service in case of war. For twelve 
years more he was listed in the territorial reserve — liable for 
garrison duty in time of war, and even for front rank service 
in special need. Exemption from training was usually allowed 
to the only son of a dependent widow, to students of theology, 
and to those unfit because of physical defects. 

The Prussian victories of 1866 and 1870 convinced all Europe 
of the superiority of this system over the old professional armies, 



1 The war revealed this class as gross exploiters, fattening on their coun- 
try's need. In no other land did war-profiteering prosper on so large a 
scale as in Germany, where the general misery was so terrible. This growth 
of huge war-fortunes was shown plainly by the government's income-tax 
reports in 1918, as published in German papers. 



6 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

Europe and nearly every state in Europe soon adopted it, with slight 

adopts the variations as to age and exemptions. Europe became a group 
army system of armed camps. Along with this went ever-increasing atten- 
tion to improved rifles, larger cannon, and other costly arma- 
ment. The burden was enormous, and the direct cost was 
far less than the indirect cost involved in withdrawing so 
large a part of each man's best years from productive work. 
England, trusting to her navy, and the United States, trusting 
to her position, were the only large countries that dared refuse 
the crushing burden — and for England the cost of her navy 
was almost as serious. Certain good results, no doubt, as 
well as many evil ones, came from the military discipline ; but 
on the whole that army system was the most woeful waste of 
human energy the world ever saw. 

"Worse still, this militarism was a constant temptation to 
war ; and, in Germany, the worst result was the way in which it 
helped to make the masses servile in private life under the rule 
of king, junker, and policeman. Flogging and other brutal 
punishment for slight offenses was the rule in the Prussian army ; 
and there are reliably reported numerous cases of suicide by 
soldiers who were so mistreated by officers that they could no 
longer live in decent self-respect. Those who submitted to 
such " discipline " became slaves. 

Militarism was one phase of the Prussian danger to the 
world, as autocracy was the other phase. Militarism is 
not the same thing as having a large army, though it is 
likely to grow out of having one. Militarism is a state of 
mind regarding the army : a habit of thinking that the army 
is the most important matter, and of exalting it above the 
civil powers at home, and of trusting to force in relations 
with other nations rather than to justice and good will and 
reason. In the long run, too, militarism leads to a servile 
attitude on the part of the people toward army officers, 
wholly incompatible with democracy. 1 

1 War Encyclopedia, under "Militarism" and " Prussianism " ; and C. 
Altschul's German Militarism and Its German Critics, esp. pp. 20-21. 



PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 7 

Two results of the new commercial and industrial forces 
in German life must be noted before we are ready to understand 
Germany in the war and after. 

1. The new manufacturers clamored for sole markets. So Germany's 

Germany wished a colonial empire. In 1884 Bismarck yielded effort . for 

^ r J colonial em- 

to this demand, and after 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm supported it pire 
even more ardently. In 1883 Germany had no foot of terri- 
tory outside Europe. Thirty years later she had more than a 
million square miles — located in East Africa, Southwest Africa, 
Central Africa, in China about the city of Kiau Chow in the 
Shantung peninsula, and in many rich islands in the Pacific. 
These non-European possessions contained in 1910 some 14 
million inhabitants (besides over 40 millions more in districts 
like Shantung, which were recognized as German " spheres 
of influence ") ; but only some 20,000 of all these were whites. 
And Germany proved herself absolutely unfit to rule subject 
races, turning them into slaves, to secure ivory, rubber, and 
copra, and putting down native risings with medieval cruelty 
reinforced by modern efficiency. 

2. Kaiser Wilhelm II adopted another new policy. He Growth of 
determined to make Germany a great naval power. He en- n av^ipower 
larged and fortified the Kiel Canal, near the base of the Danish 
peninsula, from the North Sea to the Baltic, so that his navy 

might have perfect protection and so that it might instantly 
concentrate in either sea. And year by year, against the violent 
resistance of the Socialists in the Reichstag, he forced through 
huge appropriations to construct more superdreadnaughts. 

The pretext for this naval policy was the need to protect the 
new trade and new colonies. The real motive, often frankly 
confessed, was, at the first chance, to destroy England and 
weaken the United States. Indeed the Kaiser and his advisers 
said openly that, had their fleet been ready, they would have 
attacked the United States during our Spanish War, to destroy 
the Monroe Doctrine with its check upon German plans in South 
America (cf. West's American People, §§ 762, 771). In 1902 
Germany had a difficulty with Venezuela, and showed plain 



8 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

intention to seize at least a port there. President Roosevelt 
sent the American fleet, under Dewey, into Venezuelan waters 
and gave the Germans forty-eight hours to withdraw. His 
somewhat peremptory method was successful. But from that 
time, we are told, 1 German naval officers were keenly interested 
in New York's military defenses. 

Germany Some survey like the foregoing is needful to guard us against 

an ngan the " tyranny of names." England and Germany in 1914 were 
both " constitutional monarchies " ; but that does not mean 
that they were in any way alike, in government or society. Eng- 
land had a democratic government, in which the monarchic and 
aristocratic survivals were practically powerless — mere matters 
of form: the German Empire was practically an absolutism. 
England's ideals were based upon industry and world-peace : 
Germany's ideals were based upon militarism and conquest. 
Englishmen thought of the " state " as a condition for the full 
development of the individual man : Germans thought of 
individual men as existing primarily for the sake of the ab- 
solutist state. German capitalism was perhaps in itself no 
more grasping and greedy than like forces in other countries. 
But in England, America, or France, those forces must cease 
to work evil whenever the majority of the people are wise enough 
and good enough to will it so — and vote so : in Germany that 
capitalistic greed was backed by an irresistible military despotism 
against which the masses were powerless, either by ballots or 
bullets. 

For Further Readings. — References on the spirit of German 
autocracy are given at the close of chapter iv. On the imperial 
German government, details are given in West's Modern World, 
pp. 654-661. 



1 Davis, Roots of the War, 360. 



CHAPTER II 

MAKING "ALLIANCES" FOR PEACE 

By 1900, Europe had fallen into two hostile camps, the Triple 
Alliance and the Triple Entente. 

1. Before Bismarck fell from power, he had built the Triple The Triple 
Alliance. After 1S71 he sought to isolate France, so as to keep A 11 " 11106 
her from finding any ally in a possible " war of revenge." To 
this end he cultivated friendship with all other European powers, 
but especially with Russia and Austria. Austria he had beaten 
in war only a few years earlier (1866) ; but he had treated her 
with marked gentleness in the peace treaty, and the ruling 
German element in Austria was quite ready now to find backing 
in the powerful and successful German Empire. 

Soon, however, Bismarck found that he must choose between Bismarck 
Austria and Russia. These two were bitter rivals for control ? re t e r ^ s . 
in the Balkans. The Slav peoples there, recently freed from Russia 
the Turks, looked naturally to Russia, who had won their 
freedom for them, as the " Big Brother " of all Slavs and all 
Greek religionists. But Austria, shut out now from control 
in Central Europe, was bent upon aggrandizement to the South. 
In particular her statesmen meant to win a strip of territory 
through to Salonika, on the Aegean, so that, with a railroad 
thither, they might control the rich Aegean trade. If Serbia 
were able to fulfill her dream of a South Slav state reaching to 
the Adriatic, she would interpose an inseparable Slav barrier 
to this plan, right across the path of Austria's ambition. Ac- 
cordingly Austria sought always to keep Serbia weak and small ; 
while Russia, hating Austria even more than she loved the 
Balkan Slavs, backed Serbia. 

9 



10 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Italy drawn 
into Bis- 
marck's 
league 



This rivalry between Austria and Russia became so acute 
by 1879 that there was always danger of war ; and in that 
year Bismarck chose to side with Austria as the surer ally. 
Accordingly he formed a definite written alliance with Austria 
to the effect that Germany would help Austria in case of war 
with Russia, and Austria would help Germany in case she were 
attacked by France and any other Power. 

Three years later, Bismarck drew Italy into the league, 
making it the Triple Alliance. Italy was so bitterly enraged at 
the French seizure of Tunis in that year, in flat disregard of 
Italian imperialistic ambitions there, that she laid aside her 
ancient differences with Austria for a time and agreed to aid 
the central empires in any war in which they should be attacked 
by two or more powers — in return for backing in her colonial 
ambitions. 

2. Then Russia and France, each isolated in Europe, drew 
together for mutual protection into a " Dual Alliance " (1884). 
But Bismarck hoped to draw England into his " triple " 
league ; and his hope was not unreasonable. In the eighties 
and nineties, England and France were bitter rivals in Africa, 
and England and Russia, in Asia. England, however, clung 
to a proud policy of " splendid isolation." Then, after Bis- 
marck's fall, she began to see in the German Emperor's colonial 
ambitions a more threatening rival than France ; and Russia's 
defeat by Japan made Russia less dangerous. German mili- 
tarism was deeply hateful to English democracy, and Germany's 
new commercial activity threatened England's trade, while the 
new navy that the Kaiser was building could be meant only to 
work England's destruction. Moreover, England and France 
were daily coming to a better understanding, and in 1903 a 
sweeping arbitration treaty put any war between them almost 
out of the question. Soon afterward, England and Russia 
succeeded in agreeing upon a line in Persia which should sepa- 
rate the "influence" of one power in that country from the " in- 
fluence " of the other, so removing all immediate prospect of 
trouble between the two (1910). 



"ALLIANCES" FOR PEACE 11 

From this time the Dual Alliance became the Triple Entente The Triple 
— England, France, and Russia. England was not bound by Entente 
definite treaty to give either country aid in war ; but it was 
plain that France and Russia were her friends, and that she 
could not look on quietly and see her friends crushed by 
Germany — which was showing marked hostility to her. 

Each of the two huge armed leagues always protested that The al- 
its aim was peace. No doubt many men in both — and nearly peace 8 *" 
all in one — ■ did shrink from precipitating a conflict between 
such enormous forces under the new conditions of army or- 
ganization, quick transportation, and deadly explosives. For 
half a century (1871-1914), except for the minor struggles in 
the half-savage Balkans, Europe rested in an " armed peace." 

But this " peace " was based upon fear, and it was costly. Mild efforts 

Year bv vear, each alliance strove to make its armies and navies world 

J J . peace 

mightier than the other's. Huge and huger cannon were in- 
vented, only to be cast into the scrap heap for still huger ones. 
A dreadnaught costing millions was scrapped in a few months 
by some costlier design. The burden upon the workers and 
the evil moral influences of such armaments were only less 
than the burden and evil of war. In every land voices began 
to cry out that it was all needless : that the world was too 
Christian and too wise ever again to let itself be desolated by a 
great war. And then came some interesting efforts to find new 
machinery by which to guard against war — in standing arbi- 
tration treaties, permanent international tribunals like the 
Hague Court, and occasional World Congresses. 

Too soon, however, it was made plain, that, noble as these Germany 

efforts were, they were insufficient, in the absence of a more defeats 

. . . proposals 

organized world opinion and organized world force and of radical for disarma- 

measures of disarmament. And at the Hague Congresses in ment 

1899 and in 1907, the earnest proposals for disarmament made 

by England and the United States failed of result because of 

the implacable opposition of Germany and Austria. It is 

significant, too, that Germany repeatedly refused to enter into 

standing arbitration treaties with the United States, though 



12 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

such treaties had been concluded between us and every other 
important country. 

The year 1913, after some local wars in the Balkans, saw a 
new outburst of militarism. Germany adopted a new army 
bill planning an increase of the army in peace from 650,000 to 
870,000, with an immense money appropriation. 1 Three weeks 
later (July 20), France, in terror, raised her term of active 
service from two years to three, adding fifty per cent to her 
forces under arms. Austria and Russia adopted plans for 
similar reorganization of their armies. Even little Belgium, 
alarmed at the building of German railways to her border — at 
vast expense and with no apparent purpose except for invasion 
— adopted universal military service. Each country of course 
found excuse and incitement to further efforts in the like 
efforts by its rivals. In particular, German and Austrian 
papers published frenzied articles on the danger with which 
their countries were threatened by the proposed enormous in- 
crease of Russia's army and by new Russian railways that ap- 
parently looked to an invasion of Germany, just as German 
roads looked to an invasion of Belgium and France. The 
" balance " of power was a matter of unstable equilibrium. A 
touch would tip it into universal war. 

Within a year that war was precipitated by a trivial event in 
the Balkans. 



1 The Socialists in the Reichstag voted against the army bill, but im- 
mediately afterward most of them voted for the appropriation. This in- 
consistency has a partial explanation not wholly to their discredit. The new 
taxes, for the first time in the history of the Empire, bore heavily upon large 
incomes and upon the landlords. The Socialists had long advocated this 
sort of taxation in vain. 



CHAPTER III 



THE BALKANS : THE SEED GROUND OF WAR 



A century ago, all southeast Europe, beyond Austria and The Balkan 
Russia, was part of Turkey. But the Turks were mere in- races 
vaders. They were rulers, but not numerous in Europe except 
near Constantinople, and they had no part in European civiliza- 
tion. 

In no other part of the earth of so small extent was there The Greeks 
such a mingling of distinct peoples — even apart from the 
Turkish conquest. The land is puckered and crumpled into 
a quaint network of interlacing mountains and valleys ; and 
the inhabitants themselves were almost as much intermixed. 

Besides the ruling Turk there were five distinct subject races. Roumanians 
In the old Hellenic peninsula dwelt the Greeks, with the mem- 
ories of their ancient greatness. North of the Danube lay the 
Roumanians, proud of their legendary descent from Roman 
colonists in Dacia. Their language to-day is closer to the old 
Latin than is any other living European language, although in 
blood the people are no doubt now mainly Slav. Only half 
their race lived in " Roumania." One fourth dwelt in Bessa- 
rabia, which Russia had seized from the Turks in 1812 ; and 
another fourth were in Transylvania, which Hungary had held 
ever since she conquered it from the Turks in the eighteenth 
century. 

Between these Greek and " Roman " peoples lay the Bul- 
garians, the Serbs, and along the Adriatic just north of Greece, 
the Albanians. These last were wild herdsmen, descendants Albanians 
of the ancient Illyrians. For the most part they had adopted 
Mohammedanism and they willingly supplied excellent troops 
for the Turkish army ; but in other respects their poverty and 

13 



14 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



their mountains made it possible for them to keep a rude sort 
of self-rule, without much interference from Constantinople. 
Serbs and Bulgars need a longer explanation. 

The Serbs were the leading survivors of the conquering South 
Slavs who settled in the Balkan regions in the sixth century. 
They have long been imbued with a natural ambition to restore 
their ancient empire as it stood when the Turk overthrew it in 
the fatal battle of Kossova (1389). But even more than the 
Roumanians, the South Slavs had been broken up by accidents 
of war. The northwestern part, the Bosnians, had remained 
independent longer than Serbia proper; and then, when they 
were conquered, their nobles became Mohammedans, to secure 
Turkish favor, though the peasants remained Greek Christians 
— like most of the subject peoples outside Albania. Other 
northern parts of Serbia, lands of the Croats and Slovenes, 
were reconquered from Turkey by Hungary in the eighteenth 
century, and so were no longer part of the home land, to which 
by race and language they belonged. Moreover, in the fast- 
nesses of Montenegro (" Black Mountain ") dwelt some 200,000 
half-savage Serbs who had never yielded to the Turks but had 
kept their freedom at the cost of " five hundred years of 
ferocious heroism." In Serbia itself, the Turks had for the 
most part killed off the nobles. The village life was left, how- 
ever, much as it had been of old. The people managed their 
local matters in small democracies, and earned their living as 
farmers and herdsmen of droves of pigs — for which, however, 
they had no proper sale after Austrian jealousy shut them from 
her markets. As in all Christian lands ruled by the Turk, 
oppression and cruelty dwarfed their civilization. 

East of Serbia, beyond a dividing mountain range, lay the 
Bulgarians. The " Bulgars " came into the peninsula as 
conquerors from central Asia some two centuries later than the 
Slav Serbs. Originally they were baggy-trousered Asiatic 
nomads, akin to Tartars and Turks, and to-day they have in- 
tense pride in that ancient history as a race of conquerors. 
But in blood they have 'been so absorbed by the Slavs among 



THE BALKANS 15 

whom they settled that there is little real difference in race be- 
tween them and Roumanian on the one side or Serb on the 
other. 

Still a long history of rivalry, warfare, and mutual cruelty Race ha- 
has left an intense "race" hatred between Bulgars, Serbs, t y ed i s . and 

rivalries 

and Greeks ; and this hatred has been made hotter by the fact 
that each one of the three has hoped to win for itself the 
northern Aegean coast, as the Turkish power has decayed. 
Turkish misrule has still further confused this perplexing 
picture. During her centuries of control, to keep Bulgarians 
and Serbs, either one, from rising unitedly against her, Turkey 
has transplanted whole groups of Bulgarian villages into Serbia, 
quite in the fashion of ancient Oriental despotisms, replacing 
them with villages of transplanted Serbs — so that each sub- 
ject race should always have enemies in its midst. 

This is a proper place to survey the distinctive marks of 
the four great divisions of European Slavs : (1) the Russians, 
influenced by long Tartar domination in the middle ages, by 
admixture with various border peoples, and by the Greek 
Church ; (2) the Poles, set off from the Russians by the 
adoption of Latin Christianity and by German instead of 
Tartar influence ; (3) the Bohemian and neighboring Slavic 
peoples now known as Czecho-Slovaks, resembling the Poles 
in their history but dominated in recent centuries by Aus- 
trian Germans ; and (4) these South Slavs of the Balkans, 
with a promising Greek influence in the early middle ages, 
followed by a long and crushing subjection to the Turk 
which has lasted in part to our day. 

It is impossible to tell here the long agony of the century The subject 
struggle by which the subject Balkan peoples finally threw off races win 
the Turkish yoke, but some parts of the story are necessary. 
The first successful revolt was the Greek rising in 1821-1828. 
The intervention of England, Russia, and France compelled 
Turkey to grant Greek independence ; and at the same time 
Roumania and Serbia advanced to the position of merely tribu- 



16 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



tary states, dependent upon Turkey but ruled by their own 
princes. 

The Crimean War (1856), in which France and England 
attacked Russia, bolstered up the tottering Ottoman Empire 
for a time, but a great collapse came twenty years later. The 
Sultan had promised many reforms for his Christian subjects, 
but these promises bore no fruit ; and in 1875-1876, the Serbs 
in Bosnia and the Bulgarians rose for independence. There 
followed the horrible events long known as the " Bulgarian 
Atrocities." Turkish soldiers destroyed a hundred Bulgarian 
villages with every form of devilish torture imaginable, and mas- 
sacred 30,000 people, carrying off also thousands of Christian 
girls into terrible slavery. 

Then Serbia sprang to arms ; and Tsar Alexander II of 
Russia declared war on Turkey (1877) — in full accord with the 
demand of his people. The universal horror in Western Europe 
at the crimes of the Turk prevented for a time any interfer- 
ence ; and in ten months the Russian armies held the Turks at 
their mercy. The Peace of San Stefano (1878) arranged for a 
group of free Slav states in the peninsula and for the exclusion 
of Turkey from Europe except for the city of Constantinople. 

Alexander would probably have kept on to secure Con- 
stantinople, had he not seen a growing danger of European 
interference. And even now Europe did intervene. x\ustria 
wanted a share of Balkan plunder ; England feared the advance 
of Russia toward her communications with India ; and so the 
Peace of San Stefano was torn up. The Congress of Berlin (1878), 
dominated by Disraeli, the English Conservative, restored half 
the freed Christian populations to their old slavery under the 
Turk; handed over Bosnia to Austria to "administer" for 
Turkey, with a solemn provision that Austria should never 
annex the territory to her own realms ; and left the whole 
Balkan district for the next third of a century in its old 
anarchy, with only slight gains for Serbia and Bulgaria. In 
fixing responsibility for the World War of 1914, this crime of 
1878 cannot be wholly overlooked. 



THE BALKANS 17 

It is only fair to note that while the English government Germany 
under Disraeli was chiefly responsible for that crime, the Eng- ^ cc ^ e I, t0 
lish people promptly repudiated it at the polls. Gladstone came place as the 
forth from retirement to stump England against the " shameful £ e ° 
alliance with Abdul the Assassin " ; and at the next elections 
(1880), Disraeli was overthrown by Gladstone with huge ma- 
jorities. The wrong to the Balkans could not then be undone, 
but from this time England drew away from her old policy of 
courting Turkish friendship — wherein her place was quickly 
taken by Germany. 

No part of her non-European empire interested German In order to 
ambition so deeply as her advance into Asia Minor. This be- ^m control 

111 rY SI cL 

gan in earnest about 1900. Germany did not acquire actual Minor 
title to territory there ; but she did secure from Turkey various 
rich " concessions," guaranteeing her for long periods the sole 
right to build and operate great railroads and to develop valuable 
mining and oil properties. This " economic penetration " she 
expected confidently to turn into political sovereignty. 

To secure such concessions, Germany had sought the Turk's 
favor in shameful ways. She loaned to the Sultan German 
officers to reorganize and drill the Turkish armies, and sup- 
plied them with the most modern arms to keep down the rising 
Christian natives under his yoke — as in the Turkish war with 
Greece for Crete in 1897. And in 1895 when new Armenian 
massacres had roused England so that great public meetings 
were calling for war upon Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm sent to the 
Sultan his photograph and that of his wife, to show German 
friendship and support. Germany knew that if she could keep 
this position of defender of the tottering Ottoman Empire, she 
could before long make that Empire into a vassal state. 

The prospect of German dominance in Asia Minor brought Germany 

Germany and Austria into closer sympathy in their Balkan \ oms * n , 

i > ■ * • • Austria s 

policies. Austria s interference in those regions had been policy 

purely bad. She aimed to keep the little Balkan states weak a ^f^ st 

i n i a Greater 

and mutually hostile to one another, and especially to prevent Serbia " 

the growth of a " Greater Serbia," which might attract to itself 



18 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Austria's dissatisfied Slav subjects. Now (1898, 1899), Ger- 
many obtained concessions from Turkey for a railway from 
" Berlin to Bagdad," to open up the fabulously rich Oriental 
trade. A powerful Serbia, through which that line must pass, 
might have checked that project. Thenceforward Germany 
was ready to back Austria unreservedly in Balkan aggression, 
or to use her as a cat's paw there. And in return for support 
in the Balkans, Austria permitted herself to sink virtually into 
a vassal state of Germany, following blindly her lead in all 
other foreign relations. 

Such was the origin of the German dream of a " Mittel- 
Europa " empire, reaching across Europe from the North Sea 
to the Aegean and the Black Seas, and on through Asia Minor 
to the Euphrates. This meant German leadership over Austria 
and Turkey and some sort of control by some of these states 
over the Balkans. If this dream could be established upon a 
solid basis — and it very nearly was done — there would be 
created a supreme world power, before which states like France 
would sink into utter insignificance. 

In 1908 came a step toward fulfilling the plan. Taking ad- 
vantage of internal dissensions in Turkey, Austria formally 
annexed Bosnia, in flat contradiction to her solemn pledges. 
This was not only a brutal stroke at the sanctity of treaties, 
but also it seemed a fatal blow to any hope for a reunion of that 
Slav district with Serbia. Serbia protested earnestly, and was 
supported by Russia. But the Kaiser " took his stand in shin- 
ing armor by the side of his ally," as he himself put it; and 
Russia, still weak from her defeat by Japan and from her revo- 
lution of 1906, had to back down. Serbia was then forced by 
Austria's rough threats to make humiliating apologies. It is 
not strange that secret societies at once grew up in Serbia 
pledged to hostility to the " odious and greedy northern neighbor 
who holds millions of Serb brothers in chains." 

Then came two events less favorable to the Teutonic designs. 

1. The first came from Italy. That state was eager to use 
the army and navy it had been maintaining at crushing cost, 



THE BALKANS 19 

and it had long seen its ambitions for colonial empire balked. The Italian 
In 1911, seeking excuse in the ill treatment of some Italian T urke y 
traders in Tripoli, Italy declared war on Turkey and wrested 1911 
from her that African province along with various Aegean 
islands. This act followed so closely the precedents by which 
France and Germany had been building up colonial empires 
that " Europe " was constrained to permit the deed with only 
mild protests. Italy's easy success inflamed her imperialists, 
however, into putting forward programs for further expansion 
in the Aegean, in Asia Minor, and especially in Albania just 
across the Adriatic ; and all of these designs were exceedingly 
distasteful to her two allies in the Triple Alliance. 

2. And Italy's victory encouraged another attack upon The Balkan 
Turkey. United action by the mutually hostile Balkan states ar ° 
had seemed impossible. But in 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Mon- 
tenegro, and Greece suddenly joined in a war to drive the Turk 
out of Europe — and to divide his possessions there among 
themselves. Serbia was to have northern Albania, with its 
seaports ; Montenegro, the port of Scutari ; Greece, southern 
Albania and a small strip of Macedonian coast ; and Bulgaria 
the bulk of Macedonia. 

The allies won swift victories and in a few months were almost 
at the gates of Constantinople. " Europe " intervened to 
arrange the peace terms. Italy, like Austria, was hostile to a 
Greater Serbia ; and at the insistence of these powers backed 
by Germany, a new Kingdom of Albania was created, shutting 
off Serbia once more from the sea she had reached, while Mon- 
tenegro was forced, by threat of war, to give up to Albania 
Scutari, which she had conquered. Turkey was to surrender, 
mostly to Bulgaria, her remaining territory in Europe except 
for Constantinople. Germany had carried her points in this 
settlement ; but her ally, Turkey, had collapsed, and events 
were at once to show that in siding with Bulgaria she had " put 
her money on the wrong horse." 

The treaty left Bulgaria almost the only gainer. The cheated 
allies demanded that she now share her gains with them. She 



20 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The Second refused ; and at once (June, 1913) followed " the Second Balkan 

19l3 anWar ' War " Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Roumania attacked 

Bulgaria. The Turks seized the chance to reoccupy Adrianople, 

and were permitted to keep it. In a month Bulgaria was 

crushed, and a new division of booty was arranged. Greece 



The Balkans 
in 1913 




/BU L G A R I Aj * 



Nish <-. 





1912 



1913 



The Balkan States. 



won the richest prize, including the city of Saloniki ; but each 
of the other allies secured gains in the " July War." 

This contest left Roumania the largest Balkan state, with 
about seven and a half million people. Then came Serbia, 
Greece, and Bulgaria, each with about four and a half million. 
Montenegro had risen to nearly a half million. Albania counted 
800,000 ; and remaining " Turkey in Europe," nearly two 
million. All these nations have a frightful amount of il- 
literacy, and none has much wealth. All had a legislature 
elected by manhood suffrage, and Greece and Roumania had 



THE BALKANS 21 

considerable real political freedom. In the other lands, the 
monarchs were almost absolute. 

The Balkan nations came out of the two wars not only 
terribly exhausted, but hating one another with ferocious in- 
tensity. Especially did Bulgar now hate Serb and Greek ; 
and each side, with too much truth, accused the other of wanton 
butcheries and outrages during the war quite as bad as had ever 
been suffered from the Turk. Serbia, too, was still cheated of 
her proper desire for an outlet on the Adriatic — her only 
natural gateway to the outside world — and she resented fiercely 
the Austrian and Italian policy which had so balked her. More 
openly than ever before, in the months that followed, enthusi- 
astic Serb patriots talked of recovering from Austria the Slav 
provinces of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, for a South Slav 
state ; and this talk was encouraged by hope of Russian aid, — 
a hope long fostered by secret Russian intrigue. 

To this pass the unhappy Balkan lands had been brought 
by the evil-starred Congress of Berlin, thirty-five years before, 
and by the greed and rivalries of the Great Powers since that 
time. The Balkans had been made a seed ground for war, and 
in many ways the wars of 1912-1913 prepared the occasion for 
the world struggle that began in the next year. Austria felt 
deeply humiliated by the outcome of the Second Balkan War, 
and was planning to redress her loss of prestige by striking 
Serbia savagely on the first occasion. Prince Lichnowsky, Ger- 
man ambassador at London, tells us now that only England's 
honest desire for peace, and her coaxing Montenegro and Serbia 
into submission in 1913 at the close of the First Balkan War, 
prevented a world war then. A year later, England's efforts 
to a like end failed. 



CHAPTER IV 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 



The occasion of the war, it has just been said, was found in 
the Balkan situation ; but for the cause we must turn back 
to Germany. For nearly half a century that country had been 
ruled by a Prussian despotism resting upon a bigoted, arrogant 
oligarchy of birth, and a greedy, scheming oligarchy of money. 
That rule had conferred on Germany many benefits. It had 
cared for the people as zealously as the herdsman cares for the 
flocks he expects to shear. But in doing so it had amazingly 
transformed the old peace-loving, gentle German people. 

It had taught that docile race (1) to bow to Authority, rather 
than to Right ; 1 (2) to believe Germany stronger, wiser, better 
than " decaying " England, " decadent and licentious " France, 
" uncouth and anarchic " Russia, or " money-serving " America ; 
(3) to be ready to accept a program, at the word of command, 
for imposing German Kultar upon the rest of the world by 
force; (4) to regard war, even aggressive war, not as horrible 
and sinful, but as beautiful, noble, desirable, and right, — the 
final measure of a nation's worth, and the divinely appointed 
means for saving the world by German conquest ; and finally 
(5) to disregard ordinary morality, national or individual, when- 
ever it might interfere with the victory of the " Fatherland." 

Insensibly to most of the rest of the world, this rabid and 
diseased patriotism of the Germans had become a menace to 
freedom and civilization. It was the strangest doctrine of 
national pride the world ever heard. There were not wanting 
German writers to claim that Joan of Arc, Dante, and Jesus 



1 Observers have often confounded this trait "with respect for law," — 
its precise opposite. 

22 



mouths 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 23 

himself owed their merits to German blood — along with like 
astounding assumptions of German descent to explain Voltaire, 
Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar. Napoleon even, it was 
urged by some enthusiastic German patriots, must have been 
descended from the German Vandals. 

The viciousness of these German teachings about war must 
be shown briefly " out of their own mouths " : 

" War is the noblest and holiest expression of human activity. " Out of 
f For us, too, the glad, great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep their own 
in the German heart must live the joy of battle and the longing for 
it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the old women in breeches who 
fear war and deplore it as cruel and revolting. No ; war is beautiful. 
Its august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond the earthly 
and the common. In the cloud palace above sit the heroes Frederick 
the Great and Blucher; and all the men of action — the great 
Emperor, Moltke, Roon, Bismarck — are there as well, but not 
the old women who would take away our joy in war. . . . That is 
the heaven of yotmg Germany.'^} — Jung Deutschland, October, 1913 
(the official organ of the " Young German League," an organization 
corresponding in a way to our Boy Scouts). 

" Germany's mission is to rejuvenate exhausted Europe by a 
diffusion of Germanic blood." — School and Fatherland, 1913 (a 
school manual). 

" Our fathers have left us much to do. . . . To-day it is for Ger- 
many to arise from a European to a world power. . . . Humani- 
tarian dreams are imbecility. . . . Right and wrong are notions 
indispensable in private life. The German people are always right, 
because they number 87,000,000 souls." — Tannenberg, Gross- 
Deutschland, 1913. 

" We are the salt of the earth. . . . God has called us to 
civilize the world. . . . We are the missionaries of human prog- 
ress." — Wilhelm II, speech at Bremen, March 22, 1900. 

" Even in the distance, and on the farther side of the ocean, with- 
out Germany and the German Emperor, no great decision dare 
henceforth be taken." — Wilhelm II, at Kiel, July 3, 1900. 

" It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." 

— Wilhelm II, address, June 20, 1902. 
" The world owes its civilization to Germany alone. . . . The 

time is near when the earth must be conquered by the Germans." 

— Wirth, Weltmacht in der Geschichte (1901). 



24 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

" Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace 
better than the long. . . . You say, a good cause hallows even 
war ; but I tell you, a good war hallows every cause." — Nietz- 
sche, Of Wars and Warriors. (Nietzsche is a leader of German 
thought.) 

" War is part of the divinely appointed order. . . . War is both 
justifiable and moral, and the idea of perpetual peace is not only 
impossible but also immoral." — Treitschke, Politics, 1916, II, 
597, 599. (Treitschke for many years had been a leader among 
German historians.) 

" We must strenuously combat the peace propaganda. . . . 
War is a political necessity. . . . Without war there could be 
neither racial nor cultural progress. 

" Might is the supreme right, and what is right is decided by war. 

" It is presumptuous to think a weak nation is to have the same 
right to live as a powerful and vigorous nation. 

" The inevitableness and . . . the blessedness of war, as the in- 
dispensable law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized." 
— Bernhardi, a Prussian general, in his book, The Next War, in 
1912. 

" It is only by trust in our good sword that we shall be able to 
maintain that place in the sun which belongs to us, and which the 
world does not seem very willing to allow ws." — Crown Prince, in 
Deutschland in Waffen, 1913. 

" Do not forget the civilizing task which Providence assigns us. 
Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of Germany, so the 
new Germany shall be the nucleus of a future Empire of the 
West. . . . We will successively annex Denmark, Holland, Bel- 
gium, . . . and finally northern France. . . . No coalition in the 
world can stop us." — Schellendorf, Prussian War-Minister, in 
1872. 

" The salvation of Germany can be attained only by the annihila- 
tion of the smaller states." — Treitschke, Politics. 

And so on almost without end. Says Guy Stanton Ford in 
his Foreword to Conquest and Kultur, 1 a notable collection of 
these evil teachings : 

1 A volume of 171 pages that should be in every school library. Issued 
by the United States Committee on Public Information, and printed at 
Washington by the Government Printing Office. 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 25 

" It is a motley throng who are here heard in praise of war and 
international suspicion and conquest and intrigue and devastation 

— emperors, kings, princes, poets, philosophers, educators, journal- 
ists, legislators, manufacturers, militarists, statesmen. Line upon 
line, precept upon precept, they have written this ritual of envy 
and broken faith and rapine. Before them is the war god to whom 
they have offered up their reason and their humanity ; behind them, 
the misshapen image they have made of the German people, leering 
with bloodstained visage over the ruins of civilization." 

True, in other lands, even in America, lonely voices are 
heard speaking this same doctrine of insolent and ruthless 
Might. But in these other lands any such occasional voice is 
smothered at once by storms of indignant rebuke. In Ger- 
many, for fifty years, this war-worship encountered almost 
no protest — except a feeble one from the Socialists. True, 
again, no great country — not England or France or America 

— has been wholly free from greed for territory and for trade, 

— just such greed as lies at the root of most wars. But in 
these lands the time is past when public opinion will support 
an aggressive war, especially with a civilized people, waged 
openly and avowedly to satisfy such low ambitions. Meanwhile, 
Germany, led by her war-besotted prophets, had been zealously 
making ready for just such wars of greed. 

No one must think that this teaching was mere talk. Said 
a member of the American Embassy in Belgium : " They 
[the Germans] fight, not because they are forced to, but be- 
cause, curiously enough, they believe much of their talk. That 
is one of the dangers of the Germans to which the world is ex- 
posed : they really believe much of what they say." (Vernon 
Kellogg in the Atlantic Monthly, August, 1917.) 

Ottfried Nippold, a Liberal professor in one of the German Testimony 
universities, shocked by the prevalence of this evil teaching, Q° eTman 
published a book against it in 1913. Said he, " A systematic Liberal 
stimulation of the war spirit is going on. . . . War is repre- 
sented to us not merely as a possibility that might arise, 
but as a necessity that must come, and the sooner the 
better. . . . To them [the war party] war is quite a normal 



26 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



institution, not a means to be resorted to only in case of great 
necessity." 

And a French secret agent who had spent much time in study- 
ing opinion in Germany made an exhaustive report to his own 
government in a secret document in 1913. In a summary, he 
listed among the forces making for war : 

(1) The junkers, " who wish to escape the (new) taxes " 
that must be extended to their class if peace continues, and 
who " realize with dread the growing power of democracy 
and of the Socialists, and consider their own class rule 
doomed " without war. 

(2) The capitalist class — the manufacturers of big guns 
and armor plate ; the merchants who demand bigger 
markets ; "all who regard war as good business," including 
those manufacturers who declare that the difficulties be- 
tween them and their workmen originate in France, " the 
home of revolutionary ideas of freedom." 

(3) The universities which teach war philosophy. 

The same report declared : " There are forces making for 
peace, but they are unorganized, and have no popular leaders. 
They comprise the bulk of the artisans and peasants; but they 
have almost no influence. They are silent social forces, passive 
and defenseless against the infection of a wave of warlike feeling." 

And even those parts of the population not easily converted 
to the doctrine of aggressive war — the peasants and the 
Socialist city workers — were at least taught, by constant 
iteration, to hate England because of her leadership in trade, 
and to fear Russia's growing numbers, and so to accept the 
idea that war was unavoidable. 

True, wherever the English flag floated, German traders 
and German ships were given freely every chance open to Eng- 
lish traders, in honest accord with England's advanced doc- 
trine of free trade and free seas. But English enterprise still 
led in world commerce. German conceit could explain this 
only by belief in some secret, gigantic trickery by their rivals. 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 



27 



Moreover the molders of German opinion taught that England 
hated and feared Germany, and would welcome a chance to 
destroy her. Between 1912 and 1914, to be sure, the German 
ambassador to England, Prince Lichnowsky, 1 repeatedly as- 
sured his government of England's friendly and pacific feeling. 
English manufacturers and merchants, he said, felt no bitter 
envy of the swift advance of German prosperity, but saw in- 
stead that such advance made Germany a better customer for 
English products. In 1912 English statesmen suggested that 
the two countries should cease their ruinous race in building 
warships. Lichnowsky wrote to Berlin that the proposal was 
made in perfect good faith. England, he said, would un- 
doubtedly try to keep her lead in naval power, so absolutely 
necessary to her safety as an island state, but she had no de- 
sire to use her navy except to preserve peace. But these 
communications, so out of tune with the purpose of the Ger- 
man government, never reached the German people. 

In 1912 there were other long negotiations between German English at- 
and English governments, of which the people at that time knew jl empt f s . to 
nothing. The English statesman offered to sign a declaration peace 
that England would not be a party to any attack upon 
Germany. This did not satisfy the Germans. They insisted 
that England should promise neutrality in a European war, 
no matter how it might come. To have done this would 
have been to desert France, and to make it more likely 
that Germany would attack. Very properly, and in the inter- 
ests of peace, the English government refused such a shameful 
compact. 



1 This remarkable German, a cultivated and able Liberal, wholly free 
from the spirit of German jingoism, had been selected for the position ap- 
parently in order to blind English opinion as to Germany's warlike aims. 
When the war came, he found himself in disgrace with the Kaiser and the 
German court ; and at the opening of the second year of the war (August, 
1916) he wrote an account of his London mission for private circulation 
among his friends, to justify himself in their eyes. A copy fell into the 
hands of the Allies during the next year, and became at once one of the most 
valuable proofs of the German guilt in forcing on the war. 



28 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



As Bismarck prepared his " Trilogy of Wars," of which he 
boasted so insolently, in order to make Prussia mistress of 
Germany, so after 1890, even more deliberately, Kaiser Wilhelm 
and his advisers prepared vaster war to make Germany mistress 
of the world. They hoarded gold in the war chest ; heaped up 
arms and munitions, and huge stocks of raw materials, to 
manufacture more ; secretly tried out new military inventions 
on a vast scale, — submarines, zeppelins, poison gases, new 
explosives ; created a navy in a race to best England's ; bound 
other ruling houses to their own by marriage or by placing 
Hohenzollerns directly on the throne — in Russia, Greece, 
Bulgaria, Roumania ; reorganized the Turkish Empire and 
filled offices in the army and navy there with Germans ; per- 
meated every great country, in the Old World and the New, 
with an insidious and treacherous system of spies in the guise 
of friendly business shielded by innocent hospitality ; and 
secured control of banking syndicates and of newspapers in 
foreign lands, especially in Italy and America, so as to influence 
public opinion. 

In June, 1914, the Kiel Canal was finally opened to the 
passage of the largest ships of war. Now Germany was ready, 
and her war lords were growing anxious to use their preparation 
before it grew stale — and before France and Russia, some- 
what alarmed now, should have time to put into effect their 
new army laws (above). Moreover war, better than any- 
thing else, would quiet the rising feeling in Germany, especially 
among the Socialists, against militarism. 1 

Germany, we know now, had seriously considered precipitating 
war on several recent occasions connected with colonial ques- 
tions 2 in Africa; but her leaders prudently preferred a first 



1 See C. Altschul's German Militarism and Its German Critics, No. 13 in 
the War Information Series. 

2 The two Morocco crises, 1905-1906 and 1911, were each caused by a 
brutal German show of force. War was averted the first time only by 
studious French moderation, and, the second time, by England's plain 
declaration that she would side with France. See War Encyclopedia under 
" Morocco," and Harding's Great War, Ch. ii. III. 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 29 

war in which England would not be likely to join, so that the 
Teutonic empires might have only France and Russia to deal 
with at one time. Almost any colonial problem would concern 
England, who had been a chief party in the many European con- 
ferences that had adjusted colonial disputes. In the Balkans, 
however, England had shown no selfish interest for many years, 
and it was easy to believe that she would not fight upon a Balkan 
question. 

And now came just the kind of occasion the German war The Sera- 
lords wished. Ever since its unjust seizure by Austria, Bosnia j C ™ mur ~ 
had been seething with conspiracies against Austrian rule. June 28, 
June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke 
Francis, and his wife, were assassinated while in Bosnia by some 
of these conspirators. The Serbian government had warned 
the Archduke not to visit Bosnia, fearing an attack upon him ; 
but the Austrian government, strangely, had permitted him to 
go without any special precautions. 

Europe was aghast. Horror at the dastardly murder was 
mingled with fear of a great European war. Austria, it was 
known, was greedy for Serb territory. But if she used this 
murder as an excuse to attack Serbia, Russia was bound, by 
honor and by her interests, to defend that little Slav country. 
And a conflict between Austria and Russia could not but draw 
in at once Germany and France, and perhaps others. 

Austrian papers loudly declared Serbia responsible for the The month 
murder, inasmuch as she had not suppressed societies of con- of qmet 
spirators within her borders agitating for Bosnian liberation. 
But a month passed quietly before the Austrian government 
made any formal demand upon Serbia, and European fears died 
down. That month, we know now on German evidence, 1 was 



' 1 July 5 there was held at Potsdam a secret conference of military au- 
thorities, bankers, and manufacturers of munitions, and so on ; and a war 
program was decided upon. When the story leaked out, German papers 
denied it vehemently ; but before the war closed, the truth of the meeting 
was well established by German evidence. The money kings asked a 
month's delay that they might "mobilize" their finances, turning foreign 
bonds into cash. 



30 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The Aus- 
trian ulti- 
matum, 
July 23 



Serbia's 

conciliatory 

reply 



used in ceaseless but secret preparation to strike. Then, ab- 
solutely without warning, Austria sent to little Serbia an 
" ultimatum " harsh almost beyond belief, and in the next 
twelve days a world war was launched. 

Austria made ten demands, which may be summed up under 
three heads : 

1. That Serbia suppress all agitation against Austria 
in newspapers, schools, and organizations of any sort. 

2. That she agree to dismiss from her schools, from her 
army, and from her administration any teacher or official 
to whom Austria might object. 

3. That she permit Austrian officials to become part of 
the Serbian government so far as necessary to attend to these 
foregoing provisions, and that she allow such officials to sit 
in Serbian courts to judge Serbians accused of connection 
with the murders of June 28. 

The Austrian ambassador at Belgrade told the Serbian govern- 
ment that it must accept these terms without reservations 
within J+8 hours. The German Socialist, Karl Liebknecht, at 
once said bravely that the demands " were more brutal than 
any ever made upon any civilized state in all human history " 
and that they were "intended to provoke war" (Vorwdrts, 
July 25) ; but the German government stoutly supported 
Austria. Serbia, after trying vainly to get the time limit ex- 
tended, made a humble and conciliatory reply, accepting the 
harsh Austrian terms except those under 3 above. These 
plainly would have reduced her to a mere vassal of Austria. 
But even these she offered to refer to longer negotiation or to 
arbitration. This reply the Austrian ambassador declared 
" dishonest and evasive," and he at once left Serbia. 

The Austrian demands had been sent to the Serbian gov- 
ernment in the evening of July 23, too late to allow any 
consideration until the next day — especially as the Serbian 
ministers were scattered over the country in a political cam- 
paign. The Serbian reply was handed to the Austrian am- 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 



31 



bassador July 25, at 5 : 58 p.m. He and his whole staff left 
Belgrade from the railroad station at 6 : 30. Plainly, he knew 
that his terms could not be accepted. He and his staff must 
have been packed and ready, hat in hand. 

England, France, and Russia had been making every effort 
to get these extreme concessions from Serbia, in the interest of 
peace. Now England repeatedly asked Germany to help 
preserve peace by getting Austria to accept Serbia's submission 
or by referring the matter to arbitration, or at least to an in- 
formal discussion among representatives of the Great Powers, 
so as to try to come to an agreement. Germany professed to 
desire peace but found objections to each suggestion made by 
England, while she failed to accept England's request that she 
herself suggest some plan. 

The German ambassador at London, Lichnowsky, believed 
that if his country had wished peace, a settlement could easily 
have been secured, and, we know now, he " strongly backed " 
the English proposals ; but in vain. " We insisted on war," he 
says in his account to his friends ; " the impression grew that 
we wanted war under any circumstances. It was impossible 
to interpret our attitude in any other way." And again, " I had 
to support in London a policy the wickedness of which I recog- 
nized. That brought down vengeance upon me, because it 
was a sin against the Holy Ghost." * 

So passed the first four days, while the world held its breath. 
July 28, Austria declared war upon Serbia. Russia at once 
began to mobilize 2 troops on the Austrian frontier, — notify- 



1 Remember that this was written when the war was only a year old. 
See above, p. 27, note. 

* In each European country "mobilization" was understood. Each of 
the millions of men in the Active Reserves would receive notice — through 
local authorities, who had been notified a few hours earlier by the central 
government, to report at a given hour at a given place. At that time 
and place the necessary officers would be present to organize the men, as 
they arrived, into military units ; and transportation would be ready to 
move each unit to a larger rendezvous. Arms, munitions, cannons, ma- 
chine guns, food and clothing, and transportation for all these things must 
also be in readiness. 



England's 
attempt 
for peace 
balked by 
Germany 



The ten 
days, 
July 28- 
August 2 



32 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Austria 
hesitates 



Germany 
forces the 
war 



ing Germany that this act was in no way hostile to her, and also 
that no warlike action would be taken against Austria so long 
as that country permitted Serbia to continue negotiations for 
peace. Germany brusquely demanded that Austria be allowed 
her will with Serbia without Russian interference. 

July 30 and 31, Russia offered, twice, to stop her slow prepara- 
tions if Austria would promise to exact only a moderate punish- 
ment from Serbia and not to destroy that little country's inde- 
pendence. Now for the first time Austria seemed ready to 
yield somewhat. And so Germany, which all along had willed 
the war, had to come into the open to force it on. For some 
days (ever since July 21) she had secretly been concentrating 
troops on her western frontier, ready to strike France ; and 
on the evening of July 29 a secret war council at Potsdam over- 
ruled the Kaiser's last eleventh-hour hesitation. August 1, 
Germany declared war upon Russia, 1 after an insulting twelve- 
hour ultimatum demanding instant demobilization. 

At the same time Germany gave France 18 hours in which 
to promise to abandon Russia to her fate, and was ready further 
to demand that France surrender certain fortresses during the 
war as a guarantee of good faith. The next day (August 2) 
German troops occupied neutral Luxemburg and began to mass 
upon the Belgian frontier; and the German government gave 
Belgium 12 hours (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) to decide whether she would 
permit German troops to cross her territory so as to find an un- 
guarded road into France. August 3, receiving no reply from 
France to her dishonorable proposals, Germany declared war 
upon that country and invaded Belgium, charging falsely that 



1 See Davis' Roots of the War, 510-512, for the story of a trick by which 
Germany had frightened the Tsar into a more warlike attitude. See also 
Harding, Great War, Ch. III. Liebknecht at the time declared the fact: 
"The decision rests with William II. . . . But the war-lords are at work 
. . . without a qualm of conscience ... to bring about a monstrous world 
war, the devastation of Europe" {Vorwarts, July 30, 1914). A few months 
later, Liebknecht tried to distribute leaflets among the German people to 
tell them how the government had suppressed knowledge of the peaceful 
aims of Russia and England. 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 33 

France had violated German territory — in face of the fact 
that, to avoid any clash through hotheadedness, France had 
withdrawn her troops everywhere six miles within her borders. 

Reckless falsehood and hypocritical charges against others Hypocrisy 
were the method used by Germany throughout to justify her- ° f the 
self. Says Brand Whitlock, American Ambassador to Belgium, counter- 
recounting a long list of such pretended excuses in those days : — charges 
" When he (the German) wished to invade Belgium, he said 
(falsely) that French aviators had thrown bombs on Nurem- 
berg [meaning that they had flown over Belgium to do so]. 
When he wished to sack and destroy Louvain, he said (falsely) 
that civilians had fired on him. When he wished to use as- 
phyxiating gas, he said (falsely) the French were using it. The 
thing that vitiated the whole character of modern Germany . . . 
was the lie." Upright Germans themselves saw this. As 
early as 1909 the Socialist Scheidemann dared to say in the 
Reichstag that lying was " the most characteristic trait of the 
Hohenzollerns." And all will remember how Bismarck boasted 
of the forgery by which he tricked France into war in his day. 

Germany had promised, in case Belgium consented to the Belgium re- 
passage of her troops, to make good all damage, but had threat- sists 
ened the most savage consequences if her demand were refused. 
Belgium had replied with heroic dignity. Her neutrality 
had been solemnly and repeatedly guaranteed by the Great 
Powers, including Prussia, 1 and now she herself was ready to 
suffer martyrdom to defend that neutrality, as she was in honor 
bound to do. 

Belgium also at once appealed to England ; and England 
(August 3) let Germany know that the invasion of Belgium 
must stop or England would declare war, as bound by the most 
solemn obligations. The German Chancellor, Bethmann- 



1 Prussia was a party to the original treaty of 1839, guaranteeing Belgium 
from invasion by any country, and also to its renewal in 1870; and the 
German Empire in 1871 accepted for itself all Prussia's international obliga- 
tions. 



34 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



England 
" goes in 



Germany 
furious 



Holweg, was grievously chagrined. He had believed that 
" shop-keeping England " would refuse to fight ; and now he 
expressed bitterly to the departing English Ambassador his 
amazement that England should enter the war " just for a scrap 
of paper." 

The next day (August 4) in his address to the Reichstag, the 
Chancellor himself admitted Germany's guilt. " Necessity 
knows no law. Gentlemen, this [invasion of Belgium] is a 
breach of international law. . . . We knew France stood ready 
for an invasion [a false statement]. The wrong — I speak 
openly — the wrong we thereby commit, we will try to make 
good as soon as our military ends have been attained." 

The same day England "went in." England, it is to be 
hoped, would not in any case have looked on, to see France 
crushed, but she might have held off too long except for 
the German crime against Belgium. This was Germany's 
fatal blunder. And the consciousness that she had blundered 
called out among almost all classes a frenzy of hate for Eng- 
land — whose overthrow in a later war, it was now openly 
avowed, had been the real goal all along. France was to have 
been crushed first, to leave England alone and to enable Ger- 
many to launch her attack upon England from near-by French 
ports like Calais. From this time, too, the credulous German 
masses were taught zealously that England had willed the war 
from the first and had tricked a peace-loving Germany into it ! 
" May God blast England " became the almost universal form 
of daily greeting. 

Germany had indeed been tricked, but only by her own greed 
and conceit and her own silly contempt for others. After all, 
however, Germany was prepared " to the last shoe lace," and 
her opponents, with all the warning they had had, were not 
prepared. Least of all, was England ready for war. She had 
no army worth mentioning — only a few scattered and distant 
garrisons ; and, what was worse, she had no arms for her eager 
volunteers, and no factories worth mention to make munitions. 

Soon both parties claimed to be fighting for peace. But 



GERMANY WILLS THE WAR 35 

German leaders made it plain that they looked only to a sort War aims 
of peace won by making Germany so supreme in the world that par tie S 
no other power could possibly dream of withstanding or dis- 
obeying her. The old balance of power theory was bad enough ; 
but infinitely worse was this German theory of peace through 
slavery. Said Chancellor Bethmann-Holweg (May 28, 1915) : 
"We must endure till we have gained every possible guarantee, 
so that none of our enemies — not alone, not united — will 
again dare a trial of strength with us." 

Opposed to this ideal of a peace by force, English statesmen — 
like President Wilson later — set up at once the ideal of a peace 
of righteousness. Said Premier Asquith, November 9, 1914 : 

" We shall never sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly 
drawn, until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than 
all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against 
the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities 
of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until 
military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed." 

And said Sir Edward Grey, the English Foreign Minister, 
January 26, 1916, in the House of Commons : 

" The great object to be attained ... is that there shall not 
again be this sort of militarism in Europe, which in time of peace 
causes the whole of the continent discomfort by its continual menace, 
and then, when it thinks the moment has come that suits itself, 
plunges the continent into war." 

And again, six months later to an American newspaper- 



" What we and our allies are fighting for is a free Europe. We 
want a Europe free, not only from the domination of one nationality 
by another, but from hectoring diplomacy and the peril of war, free 
from the constant rattling of the sword in the scabbard, from per- 
petual talk of shining armor and war lords. We are fighting for 
equal rights ; for law, justice, peace ; for civilization throughout 
the world as against brute force." 

For Further Reading. — In the flood of printed matter re- 
garding the background of the war, the difficulty is to select. The 



36 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

following suggestions are made with particular view to their per- 
manent value and at the same time to their suitability for the general 
reader: — I Accuse (by an anonymous German), esp. 26-141; J. E. 
Barker's Modern Germany, 297-317, 798-829 ; W. S. Davis' Roots 
of the War, Chs. xvii, xviii, xxiv ; J. W. Gerard's My Four Years 
in Germany, Chs. iv, v ; Prince Lichnowsky's Memoirs; Gibbons' 
New Map of Europe, esp. pp. 1-367. For evidence that the German 
government was preparing for immediate war even before June 28, 
see S. B. Harding's Great War, Ch. iii, V, VI, and on Belgium's 
neutrality, the same, Ch. vi, III. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 

The Germans had planned a short war. They expected The Ger- 
(1) to go through Belgium swiftly with little opposition, and man plan 
to take Paris within four weeks ; (2) then to swing their strength 
against Russia before that unwieldy power could get into the 
war effectively, and crush her; and (3), with the Channel forts 
at command, to bring England easily to her knees, if she should 
really enter the war. 

Thanks to Belgium, the first of their expectations fell through Foiled by 
— and the others fell with it. The Germans had allowed six Be gmm 
days to march through Belgium. But for sixteen days little 
Belgium, alone in her agony, under the command of her hero 
king, Albert, held back mighty Germany. When the French 
began mobilization, after August 2, they began it to meet an 
honest attack through Lorraine ; but before the Belgians were 
quite crushed, the French managed to shift enough force to 
the north, along with a hurried and poorly equipped " Ex- 
peditionary Army " of 100,000. from England, to delay the 
German advance through northern France for three weeks 
more — ground that the German plan had allowed eight days 
to win. Tremendously outnumbered, outflanked, trampled 
into the dust in a ceaseless series of desperate battles, the thin 
lines of Allied survivors fell back doggedly toward the Marne. 
There Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, was collecting 
all resources for his final stand. 

The Germans drove on furiously, outrunning even their The battle 
supply trains. September 3, the French government withdrew jj*® e 
to Bordeaux. But September 6, when the boastful invaders 
were in sight of the towers of Paris, only 20 miles away, their 

37 



38 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

guns thundering almost in the suburbs, tne French and English 
turned at bay in a colossal battle along a two-hundred-mile 
front. Joffre issued to all corps commanders his famous order, 
" The hour has come to let yourselves be killed rather than to 
yield ground. Troops must let themselves be shot down where 
they stand rather than retreat." The crisis came on the fourth 
day when the Germans, anxious to use their superior numbers 
in an enveloping movement around both the Allied wings, had 
perilously weakened their center. With true military genius, 
General Foch, a trusted lieutenant of Joffre's, divined the 
situation, and hurled his exhausted troops desperately at that 
key-position. Even then only splendid resolution won the day. 
Joffre had sent an anxious inquiry to ask Foch's situation. 
The dogged Foch telegraphed back hastily : " My right is 
beaten back; my center is crushed; my left has been repulsed. 
Situation excellent. I am attacking again with my left." And 
when a subordinate reported, " My men are exhausted," Foch 
replied curtly, " So are the enemy. Attack ! " And this 
time, the attack broke the invader's line. 

To save themselves from destruction, the Germans retreated 
hastily to the line of the Aisne. Later attempts by them to 
resume the offensive failed ; but the Allies were too exhausted 
to dislodge them. Both sides " dug in " along a 360-mile front, 
from Switzerland to the North Sea. Then began a " trench 
warfare," new in history. The positions stabilized, and, on 
the whole, in spite of repeated and horrible slaughter, were not 
materially altered on this Western front until the final months 
of the war four years later. 

New and ever more terrible ways of righting marked this 
warfare, with increasing ferocity and horror from month to 
month. Ordinary cannon were replaced by huge new guns 
whose high explosives blasted the whole landscape into in- 
describable and irretrievable ruin — burying whole battalions 
alive, and forming great craters where snipers found the best 
shelter in future advances. Ordinary defense works were 
elaborated into many lines of connected trenches beneath the 



THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 39 

earth, protected by mazy entanglements of barbed wire and 
strengthened at intervals by bomb-proof " dugouts " and 
underground chambers of heavy timbers and cement. To 
plow through these intrenchments, cavalry gave way to mon- 
strous, heavily armored motor-tanks. New guns belched 
deadly poison gases, slaying whole regiments in horrible stran- 
gling torture when the Germans first used this devilish device, 
in April, 1915, — until English and French chemists invented 
gas masks that afforded fair protection if donned in time — 
and infernal " flame-throwers " wrapped whole ranks in licpiid 
fire. Scouting was done, and gunfire directed, by airplanes 
equipped with new apparatus for wireless telegraphy and for 
photography ; and daily these aerial scouts, singly or in fleets, 
met in deadly combat ten thousand feet above the ground, — 
combat that ended only when one or both went hurtling down 
in flames to crashing destruction. Worse than these terrors 
even, the soldiers dreaded the beastly filthiness of trench war ; 
the never absent smell of rotting human flesh ; the torture of 
vermin ; the dreary monotony. 

The original German plan had been wrecked at the Marne, The East 
and that name now ranks with Marathon. The Russians had f ™?} in 
mobilized more swiftly than friend or foe had believed possible, 
and were swarming into East Prussia threatening Austria. 
August 26 they were defeated ruinously at Tannenberg by 
Hindenburg, a Prussian veteran of 1870, with the most fearful 
slaughter ever known in one battle in all history ; but against 
the Austrians they fared better. After winning a great battle 
on the frontier, they forced their way into Austrian Galicia 
and captured Lemberg. Germany was forced to divert troops 
from France to succor her Austrian ally during the rest of the 
campaign, and when the year 1914 closed, the Russians were 
holding their own in Poland, with good prospects of renewing 
the invasion of the Austrian realms. 

Austria had another pressing job. The story of the hatching 
of the war makes clear why she felt it necessary promptly to 



1914 



40 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



crush Serbia. That little country of fighters, however, sup- 
plied with necessary munitions by the other Allies through 
Salonika, had repulsed two Austrian invasions, and now all 
Austrian soldiers were needed to meet the peril in Galicia. 

Meantime Turkey had joined the Central Powers. We 
know now that Turkey made a formal war alliance with Ger- 
many at the opening of the struggle (August 4) ; but it was 
thought best to keep this secret for a time. In October, how- 
ever, two German warships, fleeing from an English squadron, 
received shelter within the Dardanelles. The German am- 
bassador then carried through a fictitious sale of these ships 
to " neutral " Turkey ; and, flying the Turkish flag but manned 
by their old crew and officers, the two vessels raided Russian 
Odessa. Accordingly, in November, England, France, and 
Russia declared war on Turkey. At this time, the Ottoman 
state was still shut off from its Teutonic allies by a broad belt 
of neutral or hostile Balkan territory, and, isolated as it was, 
England and Russia hoped soon to crush it. 

In the West, after it became plain that a deadlock had de- 
veloped, the German government realized the need of attacking 
England directly without waiting to annihilate France. In 
August and September, British sea-power had swept German 
shipping from the seas. If the war was to be a long one, this 
strangling of German commerce would be decisive. Hence 
the attack upon England must be tried at once if any possible 
base could be won. As a necessary step, the Germans turned 
to complete their conquest of the Belgian coast. King Albert 
of Belgium and the bulk of his heroic little army were still 
holding Antwerp. The huge German siege guns now beat to 
powder the protecting forts, and the invaders captured that 
city on October 9, — though in their exulting parade they 
foolishly permitted the Belgian army to escape towards France. 
Immediately after, they secured the port of Ostend and most of 
the rest of the Belgian coast. 

To attack England successfully, however, against her un- 
conquerable fleet, Germany needed better and nearer ports for 



THE FIRST YEAR, 1914 41 

a base, — at least Dunkirk and Calais ; and October 16 they 
began the four weeks' Battle of the Yser in order to force the 
last natural barrier protecting those Channel ports. Checked 
by the cutting of the dykes, they next brought their force 
against the thin English lines near Ypres. The gallant resist- 
ance offered the magnificent " Prussian Guards " in the First 
Battle of Ypres by the outnumbered and ill-armed English But fails at 

makes one of the most heroic stories in all history. In vain, t .% serand 

at ipres 

day after day for a long month, with slight intervals for prepara- 
tion, did the overwhelming German forces deliver their reck- 
less mass attacks upon the opponents whom they had styled 
" a contemptible little army." They wore themselves down 
upon that dying but unconquered line without ever becoming 
able to deliver a knock-out blow, losing more men than the 
total English force ; and winter conditions set in, November 17, 
with the desired ports still in the hands of the Allies. 

Thus closed the first war-season. On the west front, Ger- Close of the 
many had failed. The French government had come back 
to Paris, and the French army was in perfect condition. Eng- 
land's gallant first army had died devotedly to gain her time ; 
but the time had been fairly well used. England reorganized 
herself for war — built new munition factories — though not 
enough, time was to prove ; poured forth gold lavishly for 
Russia and France ; saved and suffered and toiled and drilled 
at home, and put into the field eventually a splendid fighting 
force of six million men, — a million ready for the second year. 
England had looked upon the war as a " beastly " interruption ; 
but she was rapidly reorganizing her life on a war basis. True, 
deceived by a stupid censorship, she had not yet grasped the 
full danger, and was sadly behind, especially in the output 
of high explosives. From the first, her superb navy swept The English 
the seas, keeping the boastful German navy bottled up in navy 
harbor or in the South Baltic, and gradually running down 
the few German raiders that at first escaped to prey on British 
commerce. This service of England to the world, if there had 
been no more, ought forever to win her the world's gratitude. 



42 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



England's 
daughter- 
common- 
wealths 
join 



The blockade of Germany was not enforced rigidly, for fear of 
offending American opinion, but already it was creating a 
serious food problem for Germany. And on the other hand, 
America's resources in food and munitions, closed to Germany 
by the English navy, were all available to the Allies. Except 
for the English navy, Germany would have won the war in 
the second year. 

Further, England's distant and peaceful daughter-common- 
wealths, — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and 
even her Indian Empire, — were rousing themselves splendidly 
to the defense of their common civilization. And Japan, 
England's ally in the Orient, had entered the war, seizing Ger- 
many's holdings in China and many of her islands in the Pacific. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 



At the opening of 1915, the chief danger to England and 
France was their too great trust in Russia, — their belief that 
the Russian " steam-roller," fully prepared, would now crush 
its way to Berlin or at least into Hungary. As a matter of 
fact, there was no ground for this expectation. Russia was 
near the end of its supply of munitions, and its industries were 
too primitive to cope with longer war. The minister of war, too, 
had secretly sold himself to Germany and was doing his best 
to hinder military movements and to waste and misdirect the 
scanty supplies. 1 Similar treason permeated a large part of 
the official classes and the court circle, centering around the 
Hohenzollern wife of the Tsar. 

The Germans understood this Russian situation — though the 
Allies did not — and accordingly they planned only to hold 
their trenches in the West and to concentrate their energies in 
putting Russia quickly out of the war. 

Russia was almost isolated from the other Allies. Germany 
closed the Baltic; Turkey closed the Black Sea; Archangel 
was ice-closed during most of the year ; and Vladivostok was 
so distant as to be almost negligible for the coming year. If 
Russia were to receive badly needed supplies, the Allies must 
force the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. Success 
in this project in 1915 would have ended the war. The waver- 
ing Balkan states would have joined Russia. Turkey would 
have been crushed. The conglomerate, ill-cemented Austrian 



The danger 
of Russian 
collapse 



Necessity 
that the 
Allies se- 
cure the 
Dardanelles 



1 Two years later this man was executed for high treason. Of Russia's 
four important munition factories, the largest was directly controlled, 
secretly, by Germany. 

43 



44 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



empire would have been open to invasion on the south ; and the 
Allies must have won. 

Thus both parties planned now to transfer the decisive 
struggle to the East front. The Allies were able to strike first. 
In February, the Allied navy attacked the Dardanelles. The 
outer forts were taken or battered down, but the inner fortresses 
resisted successfully. In March a more formidable attack all 
but succeeded. Had the Allies known how exhausted the 
Turkish ammunition was, they might have opened the straits. 
Not informed of this, however, and discouraged by heavy losses 
in ships, the navy now waited nearly two months for the arrival 
of land forces to cooperate in storming the Turkish defenses. 
When the British transports arrived, late in April, the Turks 
were perfectly prepared. British and Australian troops were 
landed, with horrible loss, under destructive fire ; but the 
heroic attempts of the Anzacs * to storm the fortresses of the 
Gallipoli Peninsula failed deplorably. In August the attempt 
was renewed, and came once more just short of decisive success. 
After this, there was no chance against the greatly strengthened 
Turkish positions. 

Meantime, in May, the Germans opened their drive against 
Russia in Galicia with the first enormous concentration of 
artillery in the war. The Russians were admirably com- 
manded in the field, and they fought, as always, with reckless 
valor. But their cannon were useless from want of ammuni- 
tion, and even with the infantry many a soldier had to wait 
until a comrade had fallen before he could get a gun to fight 
with. With amazing success, under the circumstances, their 
retreat was saved from becoming a rout. But the Austrians 
recaptured Lemberg in June, and the Germans took Warsaw 
early in August. The Teutonic armies then cleared most of 
eastern Poland of Russian garrisons before they halted their 
drive late in September, in order to attempt a more important 
drive on the southeast (below). Russia had lost an enormous 



Australian A r ew Zealand Auxiliary Corps. 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 45 

number of lives, with a million and a half of prisoners ; she had 
been driven out of a huge territory ; and her offensive power 
had been destroyed for months to come. 

On the West front, there was continuous trench fighting, with Trench war 
much loss of life, but the only important event of the year was 
the German offensive at Ypres (Second Battle of Ypres, April 17- 
May 17) when the English line was almost broken by the Ger- 
man asphyxiating gas, then first used in war. That the line 
held against this devilish attack was due largely to the splendid 
gallantry of the new Canadian divisions. Lack of high ex- 
plosives kept the Allies from attempting a serious offensive 
until just before the season closed — in September — and the 
event proved that the supplies even then were insufficient to 
prepare the way for successful infantry attack, so that the only 
result was one more terrible lesson with pitiful sacrifice of lives. 

The Germans had stopped their triumphant progress into Bulgaria 
Russia only to avail themselves of a more attractive program. j^^J 6 
In October, Bulgaria finally joined the Central powers (fear Empires 
of Russia gone), hoping to wreak vengeance on Serbia for 
1913 and to make herself the ruling state in the Balkans. Her 
secretly prepared army invaded Serbia from the east while a 
huge Teutonic force attacked from the north. Serbia had 
counted upon her treaty of 1913 with Greece for protection 
against possible Bulgarian attack. But King Constantine of 
Greece, brother-in-law of the German Kaiser, now repudiated 
that treaty and dismissed his prime minister Venizelos for 
desiring to keep Greece faithful to her ally. A Franco-British 
army had been sent to Salonika, but, after the defection of 
Greece, it could accomplish nothing. In spite of their gallant 
resistance, the Serbs were overwhelmed. The survivors of Serbiais 
their army made their way over the mountains of Albania to 
the coast, and were ferried across to Corfu by British ships. 
All of Serbia and Montenegro and much of Albania was occupied 
by the Bulgars and Teutons; and the Bulgarian atrocities 
toward the conquered populations during the next years ex- 
ceeded anything those unhappy peoples had ever suffered from 



46 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

the Turk. The military gain by Germany in this campaign 
was immense. She now dominated a solid broad belt of terri- 
tory from Berlin and Brussels and Warsaw to Bagdad and 
Persia. 

This gloomy second year of the war brought to the Allies 
only one gain. From the outset of the struggle, Italy had 
repudiated the Triple Alliance. The Teutonic powers, who 
had forced on the war without consulting her in the least par- 
ticular, had not expected help from her, but they did hope that 
she would remain neutral. The sympathies of the liberty- 
loving Italian people, however, were overwhelmingly with the 
Allies ; and the government saw its opportunity to recover the 
" unredeemed " Italian territory about Triest and Trent. It 
drove a hard bargain with the Allied governments, securing 
in a secret treaty (since known as the Secret Pact of London, 
April, 1915) promises for not only those districts but also for 
Dalmatia — at the expense of martyred Serbia. Then May 23, 
just when the Russian retreat was beginning, Italy declared 
war on Austria, and launched her armies in a drive across the 
Isonzo for Triest. But the Austrians had fortified the Alpine 
passes with every modern device, and for two years the Italians 
made little advance, in spite of much gallant fighting. The 
threat of their advance, however, kept large Austrian forces 
busy, and so lessened the pressure upon the Allies elsewhere 
at critical moments. 

This same year, 1915, saw also a serious extension of Ger- 
many's barbarous submarine warfare, with the invasion of 
neutral rights and the murder of neutral lives. This was to 
bring America into the war two years later, and so hasten the 
close ; but it was only one more phase of the deliberately 
adopted German policy of " Frightfulness " which from the 
first had compelled the attention of the world outside Europe. 

For centuries, international law had been building up rules 
of " civilized " war, so as to protect non-combatants and to 
preserve some shreds of humanity among even the fighters. 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 47 

But German military rulers, for some years, had referred 
slurringly to such " moderation " as a deceitful attempt on 
the part of the weak to protect themselves against the strong. 
Humane considerations the official German War Manual re- 
ferred to as flabby sentimentality. 1 

The first practical application of this German doctrine of 

Frightfulness had been given to the world in 1900. In that 

year a force of German soldiers set out to join forces from other 

European countries and from the United States in restoring 

order in China, after the massacre of Europeans there in the 

Boxer Rebellion. July 27 the Kaiser bade his troops farewell 

at Bremerhaven in a set address. In the course of that brutal 

speech he commanded them : " Show no mercy ! Take no The 

prisoners ! As the Huns made a name for themselves which is Kaisers 

.,,.,. ... , , , . , command to 

still mighty in tradition, so may you by your deeds so fix the emulate the 

name of German in China that no Chinese shall ever again dare Huns 
to look at a German askance. . . . Open the way for Kultur." 2 
At the opening of the World War, this " Hun " policy was 
put into effect in Western Europe. Never since the ancient 
blood-spattered Assyrian monarchs stood exultingly on pyra- 
mids of mangled corpses had the world seen so huge a crime. 
Belgium and northeastern France were devastated. Whole 
villages of innocent non-combatants were wiped out, — men, 
women, children, — burned in their houses or shot and bayoneted 
if they crept forth. All this by deliberate order of the " high 

1 Extracts in Harding, Ch. vii, IV. 

2 The troops reached China too late to be of use. American, Japanese, 
French, and Italian troops had already restored order. But the Germans 
made a number of savage "punitive expeditions" for booty and rapine. In 
these they indulged not merely in indiscriminate murder of innocent non- 
combatants, but even in many indescribable outrages upon women. General 
Chaffee, the commander of the United States troops, and the senior officer 
among the Western forces, called together the commanders of the other allies, 
and then as their spokesman interviewed Von Waldersee, the German com- 
mander. Von Waldersee declared haughtily that there would be no change 
in his policy. His soldiers "must have some chance to indulge themselves." 
Said Chaffee : "We have not come to make requests, but to tell you that 
this sort of thing must stop." It stopped. 



48 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Deliberate 
adoption of 
this policy 
in Belgium 
and France 



command," like the frightfulness of the old Assyrians, to break 
the morale of the enemy, to make it easy to hold the conquered 
territory with a few soldiers, and to terrify neighboring small 
peoples — Dutch, Danes, Swiss — so that they might not 
dare risk a like fate. 

War always develops brutes ; and the terrible nerve strain 
of this war undoubtedly tended, more than ordinary war, to 
paralyze the moral sense and the will. The German soldiers, 
too, more than the soldiers of the Allies, had been brutalized 
by bestial treatment from their officers, and, without orders, 
they committed thousands of nameless outrages upon girls, 
and Sioux-Indian mutilations upon captives. But this, horrible 
as it was, leaves less stain upon Germany than the calm de- 
cision for this policy in cold blood by the polished and easy- 
living German rulers. 

In like fashion, Zeppelins raided England, not mainly to 
destroy military depots, but to drop bombs upon resident parts 
of London and upon peaceful villages, murdering women and 
children. In the years 1915-1917, their aircraft raids murdered 
nearly 4000 non-combatants without accomplishing any military 
purpose. 1 So, too, German airplanes bombed hospitals and 
Red Cross trains, assassinating doctors and nurses along with 
the wounded soldiers ; and soon the submarines began to torpedo 
hospital ships, clearly marked as such. Nor is it easy to find 
any imaginable crime against the war customs of all civilized 
nations that was not committed and boasted of by Germany 
within a few months after this war began. No wonder that 
even neutral lands began to know Germans no longer by the 
kindly " Fritz " but only by " Hun " or " Boche." 2 



1 England long refused to adopt this barbarous policy, even for retaliation. 
She finally did so, somewhat later than France ; but more efficient results 
were found in developing anti-aircraft guns and in the use of protecting 
airplanes, so that in the last years of the war a Zeppelin raid was too danger- 
ous to be tried often. 

2 On all this, see German War Practices and German Treatment of Conquered 
Territory, volumes edited by Dana C. Munro and other well-known American 
historians, under the auspices of the Committee on Public Information. 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 49 

With German approval, and under the eyes of German officers, 
the Turks massacred a majority of the Armenians, and the Bul- 
garians massacred in wholesale fashion the non-combatant Serbian 
population. A word from Germany would have stopped these 
needless and revolting excesses against humanity, which were upon 
a scale even huger than Germany's own crimes in the West, but 
which were committed by races from whom we do not expect 
" civilized " warfare. 

To the United States, even more than to France or England, America's 
the war came as a surprise ; and for some time its purposes and at^u^^! 
its origin were obscured by a skillful German propaganda in 
our press and on the platform. President Wilson issued the 
usual proclamation of neutrality, and followed this with un- 
usual and solemn appeals to the American people for a real 
neutrality of feeling. For two years the administration clung 
to this policy. Any other course was made difficult for 
the President by the fact that many Democratic leaders in 
Congress were either pro-German or extreme pacifists. More- 
over the President seems to have hoped nobly that if the United 
States could keep apart from the struggle, it might, at the close, 
render mighty service to the world in a world-council to estab- 
lish lasting world peace. 

True, our best informed men and women saw at once that 
France and England were waging our war, battling and dying 
to save our ideals of free industrial civilization, and of common 
decency, from a militaristic despotism. Tens of thousands of 
young Americans, largely college men, made their way to the Forces for 
fighting line, as volunteers in the Canadian regiments, in the and against 
French " Foreign Legion," or in the " air service " ; and hun- 
dreds of thousands more among us blushed with shame daily 
that other and weaker peoples should struggle and suffer in 
our cause while we stood idly by. 

But to other millions — long a majority — the dominant 
feeling was a deep thankfulness that our sons were safe from 
slaughter, our homes free from the horror of war. Nor was 
this attitude as strange or as grossly selfish then as it seems 
now. Vast portions of our people had neither cared nor known 



50 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

about the facts back of the war : to such, that mighty struggle 
between Wrong and Right was merely " a bloody European 
squabble." And even the better informed of our people found 
it not altogether easy to break with our century-long tradition 
of a happy aloofness from all Old- World quarrels. 

Such indifference or apathy, however, needed a moral force 
to give it positive strength. And this moral force for neutrality 
was not wholly lacking. Many ardent workers, and some 
leaders, in all the great reform movements believed that in 
any war the attention of the nation must be diverted from 
the pressing need of progress at home. To them the first 
American gun would sound the knell, for their day, of all the 
reforms that they had long battled for. Still breathless from 
their lifelong wrestlings with Vested Wrongs, they failed to 
see that German militarism and despotism had suddenly 
towered into the one supreme peril to American life. And 
so many noble men, and some honored names, cast their weight 
for neutrality. And then, cheek by jowl with this misled but 
honorable idealism, there flaunted itself a coarse pro-German 
sentiment wholly un-American. Sons and grandsons of men 
who had fled from Germany to escape despotism were heard 
now as apologists for the most dangerous despotism and the 
most barbarous war methods the modern world had ever seen. 
Organized and obedient to the word of command, this element 
made many weak politicians truckle to the fear of " the German 
vote." 

These forces for neutrality were strengthened by one other 
selfish motive. The country had begun to feel a vast business 
prosperity. Some forms of business were demoralized for a 
time ; but soon the European belligerents were all clamoring 
to buy all our spare products at our own prices — munitions 
of war, food, clothing, raw materials. To be sure, the English 
navy soon shut out Germany from direct trade, though she 
long continued an eager customer, indirectly, through Holland 
and Denmark ; but in any case the Allies called ceaselessly 
for more than we could produce. Non-employment vanished; 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 



51 



Germany 
makes neu- 
trality im- 



wages rose by bounds ; new fortunes piled up as by Aladdin's 
magic. A busy people, growing richer and busier day by day, 
ill-informed about the real causes of the war, needed some 
mighty incentive to turn it from the easy, peaceful road of 
prosperous industry into the stern, rugged paths of self-denial 
and war. A little wisdom, and Germany might readily have 
held us bound to neutrality in acts at least, if not always in 
feeling. 

But more and more Germany made neutrality impossible for 
us. From the first the German government actively stirred 
up bad feeling toward us among its own people because our possible 
people used the usual and legal rights of citizens of a neutral 
power to sell munitio?is of tvar to the belligerents. Germany 
had securely supplied herself in advance, and England's navy 
now shut her out from the trade in any case. So she tried, 
first by cajolery and then by threats, to keep us from selling 
to her enemies — which would have left them at her mercy, 
taken by surprise and unprepared as they were. 

Our legal right to sell munitions she could not question 
seriously. Only two years before, she herself had been selling 
just such munitions freely to the warring Balkan nations. She 
demanded of us not that we comply with international law, but 
that we change it in such a way as to insure her victory — in 
such a way as would really have made us her ally. For our 
government to have yielded to her demands, and forbidden 
trade in munitions during the war, would have been not neu- 
trality, but a plain breach of neutrality — and a direct and 
deadly act of war against the Allies. 

Our government firmly refused to notice these arrogant 
German demands. And, says an authorized statement (in 
How the War Came to America) : 



Quarrel 
over muni- 
tions 



" Upon the moral issue involved the stand taken by the United 
States was consistent with its traditional policy and with obvious 
common sense. For if, with all other neutrals, we refused to sell 
munitions to belligerents, we could never in time of a war of our 
own obtain munitions from neutrals, and the nation which had 



52 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The sub- 
marine con- 
troversy in 
its early 
stages 



The new 
phase in 
1915 



The Lusi- 
tania 



accumulated the largest reserves of war supplies in time of peace 
would be assured of victory. The militarist state that invested 
its money in arsenals would be at a fatal advantage over the free 
people who invested their wealth in schools. To write into inter- 
national law that neutrals should not trade in munitions would be 
to hand over the world to the rule of the nation with the largest 
armament factories. Such a policy the United States of America 
could not accept." 

The submarine gave rise to a special controversy. The 
U-craft were not very dangerous to warships when such vessels 
were on their guard. Unarmed merchantmen they could 
destroy almost at will. But if a U-boat summoned a merchant- 
man to surrender, the merchantman might possibly sink the 
submarine by one shot from a concealed gun, and in any case 
the U-boat had little room for prisoners. Thus it soon became 
plain that submarine warfare upon merchant ships was neces- 
sarily barbarous and in conflict with all the principles of inter- 
national law. If it were to be efficient, the U-boat must sink 
without warning. In the American Civil War, a Confederate 
privateer, the Alabama, destroyed hundreds of Northern mer- 
chant ships, but scrupulously cared for the safety of the crews 
and passengers. But from the first the German submarines tor- 
pedoed English and French peaceful merchant ships without 
notice. Little chance was given even for women and children 
to get into the lifeboats, and of course many neutral passengers 
were murdered. 

And now, in February, 1915, Germany proclaimed a "sub- 
marine blockade " of the British Isles. She drew a broad zone 
in the high seas about Britain, declaring that any merchant 
ship, even of neutral nations, within those waters was liable 
to be sunk without warning. 

The world could not believe that Germany would really 
practice the crime she threatened. But May 7, 1915, the great 
English liner Lusitania was torpedoed without any attempt 
to save life. Nearly twelve hundred non-combatants were 
drowned, many of them women and children ! The Germans 
hailed this dastardly deed as heroic, celebrating it with holidays 



Wilson's 
" notes " 



THE SECOND YEAR, 1915 53 

and a commemorative medal. With characteristic mendacity, 
too, their government asserted, falsely, that the Lusitania was 
really a war vessel, loaded with munitions. 

One hundred and fourteen of the murdered Lusitania passengers 
were American citizens; and there at once went up from much 
of America a fierce cry for war ; but large parts of the country, 
remote from the seaboard, were still indifferent to a " European 
struggle," and there were not lacking some shameless apologists 
for even this massacre. President Wilson, zealous to preserve President 
peace, used every resource of diplomacy to induce Germany to 
give up its horrible submarine policy. At the same time he 
distinctly pointed out, in note after note, that a continuance in 
that policy would force America to fight. 

The " First Lusitania Note " (after declaring that the use of 
submarines against merchant ships must necessarily endanger the 
lives of passengers and of neutrals, and after urging Germany to 
give up a practice so contrary to civilized warfare and to the law 
of nations) closed : 

" The Imperial German Government will not expect the govern- 
ment of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to 
the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the 
United States and it's citizens, and of safeguarding their free exer- 
cise " (June 13, 1915). 

The " Third Lusitania Note " (July 21) refused to consider the 
tissue of evasions put forward by Germany as in any way " relevant " 
to a discussion of "the grave and unjustifiable violations of the 
rights of American citizens," and uttered solemn warning, that if 
these " illegal and inhuman " acts were persisted in, " they would 
constitute an unpardonable offense "... 

" Repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts 
in contravention of these rights must be regarded by the Government 
of the United States . . . as deliberately unfriendly." 

These well-meant efforts of the President were answered by 
the German government with quibbles, cynical falsehoods, and 
contemptuous neglect. Other merchant vessels were sunk, 
and finally (March, 1916) the sinking of the Sussex, an English 
passenger ship, again involved the murder of American citizens. 
President Wilson's note to Germany took a still sterner tone 



54 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Wilson's 
seeming 
victory 



and specifically declared that one more such act would cause 
him to break off diplomatic relations. Germany now seemed 
to give way. She promised, grudgingly and with loopholes 
for future use, to sink no more passenger or merchant ships — 
unless they should attempt to escape capture — without pro- 
viding for the safety of passengers and crews (May 4). 

This episode, running over into the third year, closed the 
first stage of this controversy. President Wilson's year of 
negotiation seemed to have won a victory for civilization. As 
he afterward complained, the precautions taken by the Ger- 
mans to save neutral or non-combatants proved distressingly 
meager, but for some time " a certain degree of restraint was 
observed." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE THIRD YEAR, 1916 

The year 1916 brought the struggle back to the Western England 

front. England had awakened from her complacency and fully . 
. : aroused 

was at last putting forth her full strength. The splendid vol- 
unteer army was now supplemented by conscription, wholly 
new to England, and the " work or fight " rule was applied to 
every able-bodied man between 18 and 45. The commander- 
in-chief, General French, a veteran of the Boer War, had been 
succeeded (October, 1915) at his own request by a younger man, 
Sir Douglas Haig. Haig would be ready to strike by mid- 
summer. 

Accordingly Germany planned to strike first and put France The German 

out before Britain was quite ready. February 21, weeks before £ r ? wn 

ii . i • i i Pnnce at " 

campaigns would usually open in that region, she made a tacks 

gigantic effort to deal a mortal blow by an attack on Verdun. Verdun 
The capture of that famous fortress, it was felt, would open the 
road to Paris. Certainly it would have been a terrific shock 
to the French morale. 

For four days the Germans gained ground swiftly. A vast 
concentration of artillery prepared the way for each assault, 
and then huge masses of trained soldiery carried their ob- 
jectives each day, — though with almost incredible losses. 
But France rushed in her reserves by thousands in motor busses, 1 
and after February 25 her defense steadily tightened, meeting 
the haughty German boasts with the tight-lipped defiance — 
" They shall not pass." For two months more the Germans 

1 This method of transportation saved France. There was no time to 
construct military railroads, and human legs could not do the job. The 
motor bus won a new importance. 

55 



56 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The British 
advance on 
the Somme 



Brief Rus- 
sian re- 
vival 



kept up the attack with some expectation of final success ; and 
then for still two months more they renewed the assault from 
week to week, at a staggering cost of life, because the High 
Command dreaded the blow to its military prestige involved 
in a confession of failure. 

France was saved. The German failure was generally as- 
cribed to the Crown Prince, who had directed the campaign. 
Germany now put Hindenburg, the victor in the East, in su- 
preme command of all her armies. 

July 1 the new British armies began their carefully prepared 
drive along the Somme. Lloyd-George himself had taken over 
the ministry of munitions some months before ; and this time — 
for the first time during the war — the English had a superiority 
in guns and high explosives, while their tanks, now used first, 
wrought terrible havoc in the German lines. But the in- 
tended French drive, further south, did not come to a head — 
partly because of the exhaustion of the Verdun campaign, 
partly, it was whispered, because at this moment the French 
legislative chamber, having already driven Joffre into retire- 
ment, saw fit again to interfere disastrously with the plans of 
the military staff. The English struggled on magnificently 
for four months, winning back a considerable extent of French 
soil, with many villages, and driving a deep dent into the Ger- 
man line. But that line was still unbroken when the unusually 
severe weather of November brought the campaign to a close. 
Two hundred thousand young Englishmen had given their 
lives and six hundred thousand more lay mangled in hospitals. 
But they had proved that industrial England in two years had 
created and trained an army more than a match, unit for unit, 
for the veteran army of militaristic Germany. 

The war on the East front during this season furnished two 
surprises on the side of the Allies, but neither was of lasting 
value. (1) Russia showed a remarkable recovery. Early in 
June her armies took the offensive against the Austrians. For 
a month they won swift success — in great part because their 
opponents were largely subject Slavo-Czechs, who welcomed 



THE THIRD YEAR, 1916 57 

chances to surrender to a possible deliverer of their provinces 
from Austrian oppression. By July, however, the new supplies 
of Russian ammunition had again given out, and Germany had 
rushed to Austria's rescue a number of veteran divisions from 
the West front. Russia had been saved from complete collapse, 
the year before, by the desire of the Teutonic powers to 
crush Serbia and to consolidate their hold upon the Ottoman 
world. Now she was saved again for the moment by sacrificing 
Roumania. 

(2) For now Roumania had entered the war. This story is Roumania 

still obscure. Roumania wished of course to recover from war and 

Austria the great Roumanian province of Transylvania, and is betrayed 
apparently the Tsar had induced her to go in too soon by y ussia 
promises of support that was never given. The German 
traitorous court party at Petrograd, now in control over the 
weak Tsar, planned a separate peace with Germany, and seems 
to have intended deliberately to buy easy terms for Russia by 
betraying Roumania to the Central Powers. Bulgarians and 
Teutons entered doomed Roumania from south and west. 
December 16 the capital fell, and only the rigors of winter 
enabled the Roumanian army to keep a hold upon a narrow 
strip of its country. The large Allied army at Salonika did 
not stir: why is not yet fully explained. No doubt if it left 
its base, it was in peril of being stabbed in the back by Con- 
stantine of Greece ; and the Tsar vetoed all proposals of effective 
measures against that petty despot — from tenderness for a 
fellow monarch. 

Thus the year 1916, too, ended gloomily. Germany had Conditions 
tremendously strengthened her position in the East, and had a * ^f.. 01086 
lost nothing in the West. Her supply of man-power, it was 
suspected, was running low, along with stocks of fats, rubber, 
cotton, and copper, and other metals. Her poorer classes were 
suffering bitterly from undernourishment — especially the 
children, whose death-rate had tremendously increased. But 
her ruling classes felt no pinch and showed no discouragement; 
and the world was uncertain how far her domination in the 



58 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

East might retrieve her markets. Moreover, Russia was 
crumbling: transportation was broken down; the industrial 
system — always crude — was practically gone ; hunger and 
despair ruled the peasantry; and only the stubborn resistance 
of the Duma and of a few great generals seemed to prevent a 
separate Russian peace, with complete victory for Germany 
on the East. On the other hand, England, France, and Italy 
were vastly better prepared for the struggle than ever before, 
and were about ready for their maximum effort. If they could 
make that effort before Russia collapsed, they still hoped for 
success. 

And there were not wanting signs that the Allies were soon 
to receive long-delayed help from another quarter. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 

America Enters and the W ar Spreads 

In America, Wood row Wilson had been reelected President Woodrow 
in November, 1916, after a peculiar campaign. Many of his electioli in 
followers, especially in the West and among the workingmen, 1916 
shouted the slogan, " He kept us out of war." On the other 
hand, Mr. Wilson's firmness in defending American rights, and 
his plain drift toward the Allies, drew upon him the hatred 
of large organized pro-German elements. Neither party made 
the war a clear issue. 

But no sooner had the dust of this political campaign cleared German 
away than the American people began to find indisputable n e ° u t r af amS 
proofs of new treacheries and new attacks upon us by Ger- America 
many, even within our own borders. The official representatives 
of Germany in the United States, protected by their diplomatic 
position (and bound by every sort of international law and 
common decency not to interfere in any manner with our 
domestic affairs), had placed their hirelings as spies and plotters 
throughout our land. They had used German money, with 
the approval of the German government, to bribe our officials 
and even to " influence " our Congress. They had paid public 
speakers to foment distrust and hatred toward the Allies. 
They had hired agitators to stir up strikes and riots in order 
to paralyze our industries. They incited to insurrection in 
San Domingo, Haiti, and Cuba, so as to disturb our peace. 
They paid wretches to blow up our railway bridges, our ships, 
our munition plants, with the loss of 'millions of dollars of 
property and with the murder of hundreds of peaceful American 
workers. Each week brought fresh proof of such outrage — 

59 



60 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



more and more frequently, formal proof in the courts. The 
governments of the Central Powers paid no attention to our 
complaints, or to the evidence we placed before them regard- 
ing these crimes ; and so finally President Wilson dismissed 
the Austrian ambassador (who had been directly implicated) 
and various guilty officers connected with the German embassy. 1 
All this turned our attention more and more to the hostility 
to our country plainly avowed for years by German leaders. 
Said the Kaiser himself to our ambassador (October 22, 1915) 
at a time when our government was showing extreme gentleness 
in calling Germany to account for her murder of peaceful 
American citizens on the high seas, — "America had better 
look out. ... / shall stand no nonsense from America after 
this war." Other representative Germans threatened more 
specifically that when England had been conquered, Germany, 
unable to indemnify herself in exhausted Europe for her terrible 
expenses, would take that indemnity from the rich and un- 
warlike United States. Our writers began to call our attention 
to the fact that this plan had been cynically avowed in Germany 
for years before the war began (Conquest and Kultur, 102-112). 
Slowly we opened our eyes to the plain fact that just as the 
conquest of France had been intended mainly as a step to the 
conquest of England, so now the conquest of England was to 
be a step to the subjugation of America. It came home to us 
that our fancied security — unprepared for war as we were — 
was due only to the protecting shield of England's fleet. If 
Germany came out victor from the European struggle, we must 
give up forever our unmilitaristic life, and turn our country 
permanently into a huge camp, on a European model, as our 
only chance for safety from invasion and rapine — and there was 
much doubt whether time would be given us to form such a 
camp. To live in peace, as we wished to live, we must help 
crush the militaristic power that hated and despised and at- 
tacked peace. German despotism and peace for free peoples 

1 For proven guilt, see the notes to President Wilson's Flag Day Address, 
as published by the Committee of Public Information, Washington, D.C. 



THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 61 

could not exist in the same world. We had long hoped to 
keep the peace by being peaceful. But now peace had gone. 
We could win peace back only by fighting for it. 

President Wilson strove still to avoid war. Even the com- Wilson's 
plete breaking off of diplomatic relations, should that come, te ^ p ^ s t- for 
he pointed out, would not necessarily mean war. At the same peace 
time he had begun to speak solemn warning to our own people 
that we could not keep out of the struggle, or out of some like 
struggle, unless peace could be secured soon and upon a just 
basis. December 22, he sent to all the warring governments 
a note asking them to state their aims. The Allies demanded 
" restoration and reparation," with an adjustment of disputed 
territories according to the will of the inhabitants, and " guar- 
antees " for future safety against German aggression. Germany 
replied evasively, making it plain that her own suggestion at 
this same time for a peace conference was merely sparring for 
time. 

Then January 22, 1917, the President read to Congress a 
notable address proposing a League of Nations to enforce Peace, 
and outlining the kind of peace which, he thought, the United 
States would join in guaranteeing, — not a Caesar's peace, 
not a peace of despotic and irresponsible governments, but a 
peace made by free peoples (among whom the small nations 
should have their full and equal voice) and " made secure by 
the organized major force of mankind." 

Germany had ready a new fleet of enlarged submarines, and Germany 

she was about to resume her barbarous warfare upon neutrals. f esumes 

r unre- 

She thought this might join the United States to her foes ; but stricted " 
she held us impotent in war, and believed she could keep us ^.^j"" 6 
busied at home. To this last end, through her ambassador at 
Washington — while he was still enjoying our hospitality — 
she had secretly been trying, as we learned a little later, to get 
Mexico and Japan to join in an attack upon us, promising them 
aid and huge portions of our western territory. 

January 31, the German government gave a two-weeks 
notice that it was to renew its " unrestricted " submarine 



62 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The United 
States 
breaks off 
diplomatic 
relations 



"Armed" 
neutrality 



policy, explaining to its own people, with moral callousness, 
why it had for a time appeared to yield to American pressure — 
and offering to America an insulting privilege of sending one 
ship a week to England provided it were painted in stripes of 
certain colors and width, and provided it followed a certain 
narrow ocean lane marked out by Germany. President Wilson 
at once dismissed the German ambassador, according to his 
promise of the preceding March, recalled our ambassador, 
Gerard, from Berlin, and appeared before Congress to announce, 
in a solemn address, the complete severance of diplomatic 
relations — expressing, however, a faint hope that the German 
government might still refrain from compelling us, by some 
" overt act," to repel force by force. By March 1, Germany 
had begun again actually to sink passenger ships and murder 
more Americans ; and on March 3, the President asked Congress 
to approve his plan of placing armed guards from the nation's 
forces on our merchant ships. More than 500 of the 531 mem- 
bers of the two Houses were eager to vote their approval ; but 
a filibustering minority prevented a vote in the Senate until 
the expiration of the session on the next day. 

March 12, in exercise of his constitutional powers, the Presi- 
dent did put guards on our merchant vessels. Germany 
announced that such guards if captured would be treated as 
pirates. Meantime, many more Americans had been murdered 
at sea by the sinking of neutral vessels. 1 The temper of the 
nation was changing swiftly. Apathy vanished. Direct and 
open opposition to war there still was from extreme pacifists 
and from pro-Germans, including the organization of the 

1 Besides the eight American vessels sunk before March. 1916, eight had 
been sunk in the one month from February 3 to March 2, 1917. During the 
two months, February and March, 105 Norwegian vessels were sunk, with the 
loss of 328 lives. By April 3, 1917, according to figures compiled by the 
United States government, 686 neutral vessels had been sunk by Germany 
without counting American ships. When we turn to the still more important 
question of lives, we count up 226 American citizens slain by the action of 
German submarines before April, 1917. For details, see The War Message 
and the Facts Behind It. Published by the Committee on Public Information, 
Washington, D. C. 



THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 63 

Socialist party : but the great majority of the nation roused 
itself to defend the rights of mankind against a dangerous 
government running amuck, and turned its eyes confidently 
to the President for a signal. And April 2 President Wilson 
appeared before the new Congress, met in special session, to Declaration 
ask it to declare that we were now at war with Germany, ^p^fg 1917 
April 6, by overwhelming votes, that declaration was adopted. 

America went to war not to avenge slights to its " honor," 
or merely to protect the property of its citizens, or even merely 
to protect their lives at sea. America went to war not merely 
in self-defense. We did war for this, but more in defense of 
free government, in defense of civilization, in defense of hu- 
manity. Said President Wilson in his War Message : 

" The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a American 
war against all mankind. . . . The challenge is to all. . . . Neu- war aims 
trality is no longer feasible or desirable, when the peace of the world 
is involved, and the freedom of its peoples, and when the menace to 
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic govern- 
ments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by 
their will, not the will of their people. . . . We have no quarrel 
with the German people. ... A steadfast concert for peace can 
never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. 
No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it. 
Only free peoples . . . can prefer the interests of mankind to any 
narrow interests of their own. . . . 

" We are now about to accept the gage of battle with the natural 
foe to liberty. . . . We are glad . . . to fight for the ultimate peace 
of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people 
included. . . . 

" The world must be made safe for democracy. . . . We have 
no selfish ends. We desire no conquests, no dominion. We seek 
no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensations for the 
sacrifices we shall freely make. 

" It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful country into war, 
into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself 
seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than 
peace ; and we shall fight for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those 
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, 



64 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion 
of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and 
safety to all nations. . . . 

" To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride 
of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged 
to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her 
birth and happiness and for the peace which she has treasured. 
God helping her, she can do no other." 

Splendid was the awakening of America, following quickly 
on the President's call. True, some misled pacifists and the 
positive pro-German forces still did their utmost to give aid 
and comfort to the Kaiser. Patriotic pacifists, however, like 
Mr. Bryan, recognized that to oppose our entering the war 
was a matter of judgment, but that now to hinder the success 
of America in the war was treason. Mr. Bryan had resigned 
from the Cabinet, in June of 1915, as a protest against the 
President's firmness in pressing the Lusitania matter : but now 
he promptly declared, " The quickest road to peace is through 
the war to victory " ; and he telegraphed the President an 
offer of his services in any capacity. Henry Ford, who had led 
a shipload of peace enthusiasts to Europe the year before, to 
plead with the warring governments there, now placed his great 
automobile factories absolutely at the disposal of the govern- 
ment, and soon became a valued worker in one of the govern- 
ment's new War Boards. Charles Edward Russell, choosing 
to be an American rather than a Socialist if he could not be 
both, became one of a great Commission to Russia, and on his 
return supported and explained the war with voice and pen. 
Like action was taken by other leading Socialists, as by John 
Spargo and Upton Sinclair. And the oldest Socialist paper 
in America, The Appeal to Reason, soon declared itself con- 
vinced by President Wilson's statements, and came out as The 
New Appeal in support of the war. The great majority of 
Americans of German birth or descent also rallied promptly to 
the flag of the land they had chosen. Most important of all, 
the organized wage-earners spoke with emphasis and unity for 



THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 65 

America and democracy. Led by their patriotic president, 
Samuel Gompers, the delegates of the American Federation 
in November, by a vote of 21,579 local unions as against 402, 
organized the Alliance for Labor and Democracy to support the 
war and to combat a pacifist " People's Council " which had 
been claiming to speak for labor. 

And now the war spread more widely still. Cuba at once The war 
followed the example of the United States in declaring war sprea 
against Germany, and most of the countries of South and 
Central America either took the same action within a few months 
or at least broke off diplomatic relations with the Central 
European Powers. 1 Portugal had entered the war in 1916, 
because of her close alliances with England. Siam and China 
came in a little later. 

This lining up of the world had mighty moral value, and no 
small bearing upon the matter of supplies. In particular, the 
German ships which, since the beginning of the war, had been 
seeking refuge in the harbors of these new belligerents were 
now seized for the Allies, and helped to make good the losses 
due to submarines. Few of these powers except America, 
however, had much direct effect upon military operations. 

And in spite of the entry of America, Germany continued German 
to win great success in 1917. As the Germans had hoped, 
Russia dropped out. The Tsar's reactionary or incompetent 
ministers had maddened the Petrograd populace by permitting 

1 A characteristic act of German perfidy toward Argentine is worth noting 
for the sidelight it throws upon the conduct of German agents in the United 
States before we entered the war. 

Argentine was neutral, and its government indeed was rather pro-German ; 
but the people were growing restive because of the repeated sinking of Argen- 
tine ships by German submarines. Finally the German ambassador to that 
country sent a secret dispatch to his government, advising it earnestly not to 
give up its practice, but thereafter when it sank an Argentine vessel to make 
sure that no trace survived of ship or crew ("spurlos versenkt"). This docu- 
ment was secured by an American secret agent. The German government 
never showed regret for its representative's vile suggestion of wholesale 
murder of citizens of a power to which he was daily professing friendship 
and whose guest he was. 



success in 
1917 



66 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The Russian 
Revolution : 
the pro- 
visional 
govern- 
ment of 
Constitu- 
tional 
Democrats 



The Keren- 
sky govern- 
ment 



or preparing breakdown in the distribution of food. March 11, 
the populace rose. The troops joined the rioters, and the rising 
quickly became a political revolution. Absolutely deserted by 
all classes, Nicholas abdicated on March 15. The Liberal 
leaders of the Duma (Constitutional Democrats led by Miliukof) 
proclaimed a provisional government, which was promptly 
and peacefully accepted by the army and by the nation. Op- 
timists among the Allies believed that Russia had merely passed 
from an inefficient autocracy to a sane and efficient republic. 
Keener-eyed thinkers warned (1) that, in the complete collapse 
of her industrial system, Russia would almost inevitably be 
forced into the hands of extremists ; and (2) that the huge 
empire would probably break up into separate and possibly 
warring states — which in the past had had no real bond of 
union except the perished autocracy. 

These gloomy surmises proved correct. The provisional gov- 
ernment of Miliukof could not stand the strain of foreign war 
and of internal dissolution, and in a few weeks (June, 1917) it 
was replaced by a Socialist-democratic government led by 
Kerensky. This interesting man was an emotional, well-mean- 
ing enthusiast, — a talker rather than a doer, altogether unfit 
to grapple with the tremendous difficulties before Russia. 
Finland, the Ukrainian districts, and Siberia were showing signs 
of breaking away from central Russia. Everywhere the 
peasants had begun to appropriate the lands of the great es- 
tates, sometimes quietly, sometimes with violence and outrage. 
The army was completely demoralized. The peasant soldiers, 
so often betrayed by their officers, were eager for peace, that 
they might go home to get their share of the land. In all large 
cities, extreme Socialists began to win support for a further 
revolution, and in some places anarchists were taking the lead. 

Kerensky battled against these conditions faithfully, and for 
a while with some show of success. He tried zealously to con- 
tinue the war, and, in July, he did induce part of the demoralized 
army to take up the offensive once more. But after slight 
successes, the military machine collapsed. Whole regiments 



THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 



67 



The Bol- 
shevik 



and brigades mutinied, murdered their despotic officers, broke 
up, and went to their homes. The remaining army was in- 
toxicated with the new political " liberty," and fraternized with 
the few German regiments left to watch it. Russia was really 
" out of the war." After a six-months rule, Kerensky fled 
from the extremists, and (November 7, 1917) these extreme Ration 
Socialists (the Bolsheviki) seized the government and an- Russia out 
nounced their determination to make peace. of the war 

During the chaos under Kerensky, the real power had 
fallen over nearly all Russia to new councils of workmen's 
delegates (with representatives also from the army and the 
peasantry). The Bolsheviki had seen that these " Soviets," 
rather than the old agencies, had become the real govern- 
ment, and by shrewd political campaigning they captured 
these bodies, so securing control over the country. 

It should be clearly recognized, however, that no Russian 
government could have continued the war. The Russian 
people had borne greater sacrifice than any other; they 
were absolutely without resources; and they were un- 
speakably weary of war. 

In the West, the Allies had begun the spring campaigns in 
high hopes. The French had borne the heaviest burden so far, 
but they were ready for one more supreme blow. Their new 
commander, Nivelle, however, though a brilliant general, 
proved erratic and unsafe, and his great offensive on the Aisne 
was heavily repulsed. He was superseded by Petain, the hero 
of Verdun ; but the army was so demoralized and discouraged 
that it could undertake no further important operations during 
the season. 

Very early in the season the Germans had executed an ex- 
tended withdrawal in front of the British lines from their 
trenches of two years' warfare to a new " Hindenburg Line," 
which, they boasted, had been prepared so as to be absolutely 
impregnable to any assault. This maneuver confessed a su- 
periority in the English fighting machine — which the Germans 



The cam- 
paign in the 
West 

Nivelle's 
failure on 
the Aisne 



The Ger- 
man 

" strategic 
retreat " to 
the "Hin- 
denburg 
Line " 



68 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



had hitherto professed to despise — but it delayed Haig's 
attack for some weeks. His heavy guns had to be brought up 
to the new positions over territory rendered almost impassable 
by the Germans in their retreat, and new lines of communica- 
tion had to be established. These things were accomplished, 
however, with a rapidity and efficiency wholly surprising to 
the German High Command ; and in the subsequent British 
attack the Germans were saved only by the fact that now they 
were able to transfer all their best divisions from the Russian 
front to reinforce their troops pressed by the British. Even so, 
Haig continued to win important successes in Picardy and 
Flanders from April to November; but the blunder by Nivelle 
and the collapse of Russia made it impossible for him to " break 
through " to stay. 



The Russian military collapse had been caused in part 
by an exceedingly skillful German propaganda. Russian 
soldiers had been taught persistently by German emissaries 
that the war was the Tsar's war, or at least a capitalist war ; 
and that their German brothers were quite ready to give the 
new Russia a fair peace. A little later the same tactics were 
repeated successfully against Italy. In August of 1917 the 
Italian armies seemed for a while to have overcome the tre- 
mendous natural difficulties confronting them. They had 
won important battles and had taken key positions command- 
ing Trieste, when suddenly their military machine, too, went 
almost to pieces. The Germans had been using with the 
Italian rank and file a skillful propaganda. England and 
France, the Italian soldiers were told, were looking only to 
their own selfish ambitions, and were leaving Italy an unfair 
share of the burden of the war. Peace could be secured at any 
moment if only Italy would cease to attack Austrian territory. 
Meanwhile the wives and children of Italian soldiers were in 
truth famishing for bread, and information to this effect — 
both reliable and exaggerated — was creeping through to the 
ranks. 



THE FOURTH YEAR, 1917 69 

While the Italian morale was so honey-combed, the Austrians The Italian 
suddenly took the offensive. They met at first with almost colla P se 
no resistance. They tore a huge gap in the Italian lines, took 
200,000 prisoners and a great part of Italy's heavy artillery, 
and advanced into Venetia, driving the remnants of the Italian 
army before them in the rout. French and British reinforce- 
ments were hurried in ; and the Italians rallied when they saw 
how they had been tricked and how their country had been 
opened to invaders. The Teutons proved unable to force the 
line of the Piave River ; and Venice and the rich Lombard plain 
were saved. Italy had not been put out of the war as Russia 
had been ; but for the next six months, until well into the 
next year, the most that she could do, even with the help of 
Allied forces sadly needed elsewhere, was to hold her new line 
while she built up again her broken military machine. 

The brightest phase of the year's struggle for the Allies was The U-boat 
at the point where there had seemed the greatest peril. Ger- campaign 
many's new submarine warfare had indeed destroyed an enor- 
mous shipping tonnage, and for a few months had really promised 
to make good the threat of starving England into surrender. 
But the English navy made a supreme effort. An admirable 
convoy system was organized to protect important merchant 
fleets ; shipbuilding was speeded up, to supply the place of 
tonnage sunk ; submarine chasers and patrol boats waged 
relentless, daring, and successful war against the treacherous 
and barbarous craft of the enemy. America sent five battle- 
ships to reinforce the British Grand Fleet, and — more to the 
purpose — a much more considerable addition to the anti- 
submarine fleet; and newly created American shipyards had 
begun to launch new cargo ships in ever increasing numbers, 
upon a scale never before known to the world. The Allies 
were kept supplied with food and other necessaries enough to 
avert any supreme calamity. Before September, 1917, the 
menace — in its darkest form — had passed. Submarines 
remained a source of loss and serious annoyance ; but it had 



70 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



America's 
man-power 
begins to 
count 



become plain that they were not to be the decisive factor in 
the war. 

Moreover, America was slowly getting into the struggle — 
slowly, and yet more swiftly than either friend or foe had 
dreamed possible. The general expectation had been that, 
totally unprepared as the United States was for war, her chief 
contribution would be in money, ships, and supplies. These 
she gave in generous measure (Chapter IX, below). But 
also, from the first the government wisely planned for military 
participation on a huge scale. Congress was induced to pass 
a "selective conscription " act; and as early as June a small 
contingent of excellent fighters was sent to France — mainly 
from the old regular army. In the early fall, new regiments 
were transported (some 300,000 before Christmas), and per- 
haps half a million more were in training. By 1920, it was 
then thought by the hopeful, America could place three million 
men in the field in Europe, or even five million, and so decide 
the war. But events were to make a supreme exertion neces- 
sary even sooner ; and America was to meet the need. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE LAST YEAR, 1918 

France could stand one more year of war, but she was very French dis- 
nearly " bled white," as Germany had boasted. Her working content * nd 
classes were war-weary and discouraged, and the Germans had ness 
infected all classes in that country more or less successfully 
with their poisonous and baseless propaganda to the effect 
that England was using France to fight her battles, and that 
she herself was bearing far less than her proper share of the 
burden. French morale was in danger of giving way somewhat Peace feel- 
as Russian and Italian had given way. It was saved by two } ng d in Eng " 
things : by the tremendous energy of the aged Clemenceau — 
" The Tiger " — whom the crisis had called from his retire- 
ment to the premiership ; and by the encouraging appearance 
in France, none too soon, of American soldiers in large numbers. 

Even in England, peace talk began to be heard, not merely 
among the workers but here and there in all ranks of society. 
And among the laborers this dangerous leaning was fearfully 
augmented when the Russian Bolsheviki published the copies 
of the " Secret Treaties " between England, France, Italy, and 
the Tsar's government, revealing the Allied governments as 
purchasing one another's aid by promises of territorial and 
commercial spoils. For the first time the charge against the 
Allies that on their side too the war was " a capitalist war " 
was given some color of presumption. 

In Germany, too, the masses of the people were war-weary. Conditions 
The entire generation of their young men was threatened with in ermany 
extinction, and their children were being pitifully stunted from 
lack of food. The Reichstag actually adopted resolutions in 
favor of peace without annexations or indemnities — which 
from the German viewpoint was extremely conciliatory. But 

71 



72 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



A race be- 
tween Ger- 
many and 
America 



Wilson's 
" diplomatic 
offensive " 



the junkers and great capitalists were still bent upon complete 
military victory, which they seemed to see within their grasp ; 
and the German war lords at once made it plain that they recog- 
nized no binding force in the Reichstag resolutions. They 
had knocked out Russia, put out Italy temporarily at least, and 
might now turn all their strength as never before upon France 
and England. They were confident that they could win the 
war before American armies could become an important factor. 
The Allies, they insisted, had not shipping enough to bring the 
Americans in any numbers ; still less to bring the supplies 
needful for them ; and then the Americans " couldn't fight " 
anyway without years of training. 

Thus in 1918 the war became a race between Germany and 
America. Could America put decisive numbers in action on 
the West front before Germany could deliver a knock-out blow? 
While winter held the German armies inactive, the British and 
American navies carried each week thousands of American 
soldiers toward the front, English ships carrying much the 
greater number. 

And during these same months America and England won a 
supremely important victory in the moral field. In the sum- 
mer of 1917 the Pope had suggested peace negotiation on the 
basis of July, 1914 — before the war began. Woodrow Wilson 
at once answered, for America and for the Allies, that there 
could be no safe peace with the faithless Hohenzollern govern- 
ment. This cleared the air, and made plain at least one of 
the " guarantees " the Allies must secure. Then Germany 
tried another maneuver : she put forward Austria to suggest 
peace negotiations — in hope, no doubt, of weakening the 
Allied morale. Instead, in two great speeches, Lloyd-George 
and President Wilson stated the war aims of the Allies with a 
studious moderation which conciliated wavering elements in 
their own countries, and at the same time with a keen logic 
that put Germany in the wrong even more clearly than before 
in the eyes of the world. Lloyd-George (January 6) demanded 
complete reparation for Belgium, but disclaimed intention to 



THE LAST YEAR, 1918 73 

exact indemnities other than payment for injuries done by 
Germany in defiance of international law. President Wilson's 
address contained his famous Fourteen Points, of which fuller 
mention will be made later. These statements of America and 
England began effectively to drive a wedge between the Ger- 
man government and the German people, by convincing the 
masses that the Allies were warring only for freedom and for 
peace, and not for the destruction of Germany. 

And now Germany herself made plain how absolutely right The Brest- 
the Allies were in their contention that the Hohenzollerns could ^°^ k 
be trusted to keep no promises. March 3, 1918, the German 
militarists, with the grossest of bad faith, shamelessly broke 
their many pledges to the helpless Bolsheviki and forced upon 
Russia the "Peace of Brest-Litovsk." By that dictated treaty, 
Germany virtually became overlord to a broad belt of vassal 
states taken from Russia — Finland, the Baltic Provinces, 
Lithuania, Poland, Ukrainia — and even the remaining " Great 
Russia " had to agree to German control of her industrial re- 
organization. When the German perfidy had revealed itself 
suddenly, after long and deceitful negotiations, the angered 
and betrayed Bolsheviki wished to break off, and renew the 
war. They were absolutely helpless, however, without prompt 
Allied aid upon a large scale. This aid they asked for, but 
urgent cablegrams brought no answer. The Allies apparently 
had been so repelled by the Bolshevist industrial and political 
policy that they were unwilling to deal with that government, 
and preferred to leave Russia to its fate — and to the Germans. 

At that moment the result was disastrous. Murmurs in 
Germany against the war were stilled by the immediate prospect 
of an empire stretching from the North Sea to the Pacific, and 
of large accumulated stores of Russian wheat — as soon as 
transportation systems could be restored to efficiency. 

In all the Allied countries tremendous popular feeling was 
aroused against the Bolsheviki government. In part this 
was because the people — ignorant of the facts just men- 



74 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



tioned — believed that government a mere tool of Germany. 
In part it was due to hatred and fear among propertied classes 
toward any Socialist regime. But more than all else, it 
was due to a false position adopted by the Bolsheviki in 
government. They excluded all people living on their 
capital from political life. 

This of course was not a democracy : it was a class 
rule. True, in Russia it was the rule of more than ninety 
per cent of the whole population; but the example of a 
"proletarian dictatorship" was dreaded by the " upper " and 
"middle" classes everywhere. Moreover, the Bolsheviki 
announced a repudiation of the Russian national debt. 1 The 
Russian bonds were owned mainly in France; and that 
country persuaded the Allies to treat the Russian govern- 
ment as an enemy. Soon, too, various reactionary and 
middle-class movements against the Bolsheviki tyranny 
found leaders for a vigorous civil war. 

Naturally the Germans opened the campaign in the West at 
the earliest moment possible. They had now a vast superiority 
both in men and in heavy guns there. March 21 they attacked 
the British lines in Picardy with overwhelming forces. After 
five days of terrific fighting the British were hurled out of their 
trench lines and driven back with frightful losses nearly to 
Amiens, leaving a broad and dangerous gap between them and 
the French. It looked as though the Germans might drive 
the British into the sea, or the French back upon Paris, or both. 
But, as so often in their great offensives in this war, the Ger- 
mans had exhausted themselves in their mass attack ; and 
while they paused a French force threw itself into the gap, and 
British reserves reinforced the shattered front lines. For the 
first time since the First Battle of the Marne, the Germans had 
forced the fighting into the open, where they had always claimed 



1 The Bolsheviki afterward offered to give up this policy if accorded recog- 
nition. Read William Hard's articles on " Bolshevist Russia " in the Metro- 
politan (June-October, 1919) — based on the account by Raymond Robins. 



THE LAST YEAR, 1918 75 

marked superiority ; but they were unable to follow up their 
success decisively. 

In April they struck again farther north, in Flanders, and The offen- 
again they seemed almost to have overwhelmed the British ; n an( j ers 
but fighting desperately, " with our backs to the wall " as Haig in April 
phrased it in his solemn order to his dying army, and rein- 
forced by some French divisions, the British kept their front 
unbroken, bent and thinned though it was. 

The Germans took another month for preparation, and then The offen- 
struck fiercely in a general attack on the French lines north of ^ sne in th ![ 
the Aisne. Apparently the French were taken by surprise, last of May 
The Germans broke through, for the moment, on an eighteen- 
mile front, and once more reached the Marne. Here, however, 
they were halted, largely by American troops, at Chateau- 
Thierry. Then, while the Americans made splendid counter- 
attacks, as at Belleau Wood (renamed, for them, " Wood of Checked by 
the Marines"), the French lines were reformed, so that still at chateau- 
the Allies presented a continuous front, irregular though it Thierry 
was with dangerous salients and wedges. At almost the same 
time, Austria, forced into action again in Italy by German 
insistence, was repulsed in a general attack on the Piave. 

Time was fighting for the Allies. The disasters of the early Time given 
spring, the suggestion of the American commander, General Americans 
Pershing, and the imperative demand of Clemenceau, at last in- to arrive 
duced them to take the wise step of appointing a generalissimo. 
This position was given to Ferdinand Foch, mentioned above 
in the story of the First Marne. For the rest of the struggle, 
the Allied forces were directed with a unity and skill that had 
been impossible under divided commands, even with the heartiest 
desire to cooperate. 

And now, too, America really had an army in France. Before 
the end of June, her effective soldiers there numbered 1,250,000. 
Each month afterward brought at least 300,000 more. By 
September the number exceeded two million. 

The Germans could not again take up the offensive for five 
weeks (June 11-July 15), and in this interval the balance of 



76 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



available man-power seems to have turned against them. 
Hindenburg and Ludendorf (chief of staff, supreme for long 
past in German military councils) believed only in mass attacks 
over wide fronts. When one of these gigantic onsets had once 




Line of July 15 191S 

" " Nov. 10 " ••••• 



The German Lines on July 15 and on November 10. 

been stopped, with its tremendous losses and demoralization, 
a considerable interval had to elapse before another could begin. 
July 15, preparations were complete, and the Germans attacked 
again in great force along the Marne, expecting this time to 
reach positions that would command Paris. But the onset 



THE LAST YEAR, 1918 77 

broke against a stone-wall resistance of French and American 
troops. For the first time in the war, a carefully prepared offen- 
sive failed to gain ground. 

The German failure was plain by the 17th. On the 18th, Foch's con- 
before the Germans could withdraw or reorganize, Foch beqan * muous of ~ 

° J tensive 

his great offensive, by counter-attacking upon the exposed western 
flank of the invaders. This move took the Germans completely 
by surprise. Their front all but collapsed along a critical line 
of twenty-eight miles. Foch allowed them no hour of rest. Un- 
like his opponents, he did not attempt gigantic attacks, to 
break through at some one point. Instead, he kept up a con- 
tinuous offensive, threatening every part of the enemy's front, 
but striking now here, now there, on one exposed flank and then 
on another, always ready at a moment to take advantage of a 
new opening, and giving the Germans no chance to withdraw 
their forces without imperiling key positions. That is, he kept 
the ball in his own hands ; and though his forces perhaps were 
still inferior in numbers to the Germans, he took no intervals 
for rest — which would have allowed the enemy to attempt a 
new offensive. 

By the end of July the invaders had been pushed out of the The German 
ground they had gained in May and June, between the Aisne retreat 
and the Marne. Then the British, reorganized now, were 
brought again into action in Picardy, taking the burden of the 
offensive, while the French kept up activity enough to prevent 
any transfer of reinforcements to that district from the sector 
opposite them. For some weeks, the Americans, steadily grow- 
ing in numbers and equipment, were held in reserve for the most 
part — after their gallant fighting in stopping the last German 
offensive — but before the end of August the British and French 
had won back all the ground lost in the German offensives of 
the spring. 

The Germans had made their last throw — and lost. Foch's The Ameri- 
pressure never relaxed. In September American divisions £ a " s at 
began an offensive on a third part of the front, culminating in a 
drive toward Sedan, to cut one of the two main railways that 



78 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Germany 
asks for an 
armistice 



supplied the German front, and at the same time the British 
were wrenching great sections of the " Hindenburg Line " from 
the foe. In the opening days of October the German commanders 
reported to Berlin that the war was lost, and that it was necessary 
to try to get peace by negotiation. For the next month, while 
there went on an exchange of notes regarding an armistice, the 
German military situation grew steadily more critical. 



Bulgaria 
had already 
fallen 



And Turkey 



At the same time, it is true that Germany lasted longer than 
any of her allies and that her collapse was determined largely 
by events in the East. In September, the Allied force, so long 
held inactive at Salonika, suddenly took the offensive, crushing 
the Bulgarians in a great battle on the Vardar. Political 
changes had made this move possible. In 1917, now that the 
Tsar could no longer interfere, the English and French had 
deposed and banished King Constantine of Greece ; and Veni- 
zelos, the new head of the Greek state, was warmly committed 
to the Allied cause. Moreover, the Bulgarians were war- 
weary and demoralized. They had failed to get from Germany 
and Austria the spoils they hoped at the fall of Roumania; 
and now after their one great defeat they had neither spirit 
nor forces to continue the struggle. Foch's pressure made it 
impossible for the Germans to transfer reinforcements to them 
from the West. The Salonika forces advanced swiftly into 
Bulgaria. Tsar Ferdinand abdicated, and (September 30) the 
Provisional Bulgarian government signed an armistice amount- 
ing to unconditional surrender and opening also the way for an 
attack upon Austria from the south. 

And while these events were happening, a wholly independent 
series of movements were putting Turkey out of the war. In 
the spring of 1917 an English force from India worked its way 
up the Tigris and took Bagdad — after a romantic campaign 
that recalls the wars and marches of Alexander the Great in the 
Orient — and in the fall of the same year, another British force 
from Egypt took Jerusalem. But the Russian collapse en- 
dangered both these promising movements, and the pressure 



THE LAST YEAR, 1918 79 

of the Germans on the West front made it unsafe for England 
then to send more men to either of these important Eastern 
districts. But by midsummer of 1918, reinforcements were 
sent at last to Palestine ; and September 19, the British re- 
sumed a remarkable campaign north of Jerusalem. The Turks 
were utterly routed in a decisive battle, and the pursuit was so 
hot and so continuous that they never rallied in any force. 
Aleppo, the key to Northern Syria, surrendered October 26, 
without a blow, — and with it fell the Ottoman Empire outside 
Asia Minor. The Turks saw that the collapse of Bulgaria had 
isolated them from any possible German succor — and in any 
case Germany was no more able to spare troops now for them 
than a month before for Bulgaria. The Turkish government 
at Constantinople fled. A new one was hastily constituted; 
and, October 30, Turkey surrendered as abjectly as Bulgaria. 
The Dardanelles were opened, and Constantinople admitted 
an Allied garrison. 

Austria too had dissolved. After the June repulse on the And Austria 
Piave, the Austrian army was never fit for another offensive. 
At home the conglomerate state was going to pieces. Bohemia 
on one side, and Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians on the other, 
were organizing independent governments — with encourage- 
ment from America and the Allies. Then, October 24, Italy 
struck on the Piave. The Austrian army broke in rout. Austria 
called frantically for an armistice, and when one was granted 
(November 4) the ancient Hapsburg Empire had vanished. 
The Emperor Karl (recent successor to the old Francis Joseph) 
abdicated. Fugitive archdukes and duchesses crowded Swiss 
hotels. And each day or two saw a new revolutionary republic 
set up in some part of the former Hapsburg realms. 

Germany had begun to treat for surrender a month earlier, The Allies 

but held out a week longer. October 5, the German Chan- re fu se to 

treat with 
celor (now Prince Max of Baden) had asked President Wilson the German 

to arrange an armistice, offering to accept his " fourteen points " aut° crac y 

as a basis for peace. Wilson's replies to this and to a following 

communication made it plain that America and the Allies would 



80 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



not treat with the old despotic government, and that no ar- 
mistice would be granted at that late moment which did not 
secure to the Allies fully the fruits of their military advantages 
in the field. Meantime the fighting went on, with terrific losses 
on both sides, but with daily increase in the military superiority 
of the Allies. The Americans, pushing north in the Argonne 
and across the Meuse, were threatening the trunk railway at 
Sedan, the only road open for German retreat except the one 
through Belgium. The British and Belgians pushed the dis- 
couraged invaders out of northern France and out of a large 
part of Belgium. The pursuit at every point was so hot that 
retreat had to be foot by foot, or in complete rout ; and it was 
not clear that even that choice would long remain. More- 
over, the fleet at Kiel was in mutiny, and the Extreme Social- 
ists — all along opposed to the war — were openly preparing 
revolution. 

Not till late in October did the War Council of the Allies 
make known to Germany the terms upon which she could have 
an armistice preliminary to the drafting of a peace treaty. By 
those terms Germany could save her army from destruction, 
and her territory would not suffer hostile conquest. But she 
was to surrender at once Alsace-Lorraine, and to withdraw her 
troops everywhere across the Rhine, leaving the Allies in pos- 
session of a broad belt of German territory. She was also to 
surrender practically all her fleet, most of her heavy artillery, 
her aircraft, and her railway engines. Likewise she was at 
once to release all prisoners, though her own were to remain in 
the hands of the Allies. In March, Germany had treacherously 
and arrogantly set her foot upon the neck of prostrate Russia 
in the Brest-Litovsk treaty: November 11, she made this un- 
conditional surrender to whatever further conditions the Allies 
might impose in the final settlement — though the Allies did 
pledge themselves to base their terms, with certain reservations, 
upon Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points. 

Germany had already collapsed internally. November 7, 
Bavaria deposed her king and proclaimed herself a republic. 



THE LAST YEAR, 1918 



81 



State after state followed. In Berlin the moderate Socialists 
seized the government — with the support of the aristocracy 
— against the efforts of a more radical Socialist element, 
who were striving to accomplish a further revolution. No- 
vember 9, deserted by the army, the Kaiser had fled to 
Holland, whence he soon sent back to Germany his formal 
abdication. German autocracy and Prussian militarism had 
fallen forever. 



German 

revolution 

completed 



CHAPTER X 

WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 

No other war was ever so enormously destructive, but neither 
did any other war ever give birth to so many healing and con- 
structive forces. These forces we can most easily notice in our 
own land, but it should be kept in mind that they were found 
also in other countries, especially in England and France — 
in some respects, too, in more advanced forms even than in 
America. 

For this study there are two phases, more or less inter- 
twined : (1) that phase which had to do mainly with greater 
efficiency in the war itself; and (2) that other phase which 
looked to a better and finer world after the war. The first 
phase is the theme of this chapter. 
America's To our own surprise, and to that of the world, we proved that 

American democracy, utterly unready for war as it was, could 
organize for war, by voluntary cooperation, more efficiently and 
swiftly than any autocracy had ever done. Said President 
Wilson at the beginning — " It is not an army we must shape 
and train ; it is a nation. . . . The whole nation must be a 
team in which each man shall play the part for which he is best 
fitted." The task was not merely to select and train three 
million soldiers, but to mobilize one hundred million people, so 
that every ability and every resource could be utilized with the 
utmost intelligence and harmony. After all, battles in modern 
war are won mainly behind the lines. The most important 
mobilization was mobilizing our civilian population to produce 
and transport munitions and supplies, to raise food, supply fuel, 
and furnish abundant funds. 

At once the government put skilled brains at work : (1) to 
find out just what was needed in all these respects, and in what 

82 



task 



WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 83 

order, so as to be able to distribute effort wisely ; (2) to find Fitting each 
which men were best fitted for each job — often by systems of ™£ n t0 his 
tests in the hands of educational experts ; (3) to teach the 
nation, careless and wasteful by previous training, that to save 
food, clothing, and other supplies was just as useful and just as 
patriotic as to produce them ; and (4) first of all, to educate the 
whole people as to what the war really meant and as to the best 
ways of cooperating in all these ways to win it. 

The great Committee on Public Information at Washington, The Com- 
created by President Wilson, was a new thing in human history. jS^Jj* j°_ 
If a democracy was to turn away from all its ordinary ways of formation: 
living in order to fight, it must be thoroughly posted on the A ™ enc ™ 
danger that threatened it, and on the needs of the hour. Within 
a few months this Committee, at small expense, had published 
and circulated in every village in America more than a hundred 
different pamphlets, brief, readable, forceful, written by lead- 
ing American scholars, and distributed literally by the million. 
These publications did a marvelous work in spreading informa- 
tion and arousing will power among the people, demonstrating 
that in war itself "the pen is mightier than the sword." Most 
of these studies are of permanent scholarly value, and some of 
them are referred to in footnotes and book lists in this volume. 

With this Committee originated also the admirable organ- The Four- 

ization of Four-Minute Men, — some 5000 volunteer speakers „ nute 

... Men 
to explain the causes and needs of the war in their respective 

communities to audiences gathered at the movies and at other 
entertainments. Speakers and occasions were matters of local 
arrangement ; but the central Committee put the plan in opera- 
tion and made it effective by sending to all the thousands of 
local centers at frequent intervals suggestions and information 
on which to base the speeches. 

The same Committee secured the chief of America's illus- War posters 
trators, with a strong staff of volunteer assistants, to design 
posters and placards, — which were plentifully distributed in 
every city and village in the land to arouse more determination 
to save food and to save money to be loaned to the government. 



84 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



It is impossible to explain here the many other activities 
of the Committee — such as the cultivation of friendly feeling 
in South American lands, the uncovering of German plots, the 
driving of a wedge between the German people and its govern- 
ment by shooting propaganda into Germany. And this Com- 
mittee is only one instance out of many of the work of eminent 
American chemists, historians, engineers, heads of great business 
enterprises, who served at Washington during the war as vol- 
unteers with at best only a nominal money compensation, and 
often as " one dollar a year " men. 



Raising 
funds for 
war 



Liberty 
Bonds 



The United States formed no " alliance " by treaty with any 
of the Allies, but it recognized that they and we were " as- 
sociated " as co-workers, and that we must give them every 
possible aid . At first, as has been said (p. 70) , the Allies looked 
to us mainly for money, raw materials, and food. 

Money we furnished freely. To England, France, Italy, and 
Belgium (and to Russia before her collapse) we loaned nearly 
ten billions of dollars, most of which, it is true, was used by those 
governments in purchasing supplies in America. Within a few 
months after the war began, the special session of Congress in 
the spring and summer of 1917 appropriated the unparalleled sum 
of twenty-two billions of dollars for war purposes. Five billions 
of this was loaned to the government at once by citizens of all 
classes in the purchase of the first and second issue of Liberty 
Bonds (August and October, 1917). These bonds were sold 
mostly in small denominations, down to $50, and were taken 
largely by people of small means. During this first season one 
out of every ten people in the United States (children and all) 
became a bond-holder by so loaning to the government. During 
the next year and a half, by three more bond issues, the govern- 
ment borrowed of our people, including the earlier issues, seven- 
teen billions. (For the fourth issue alone, the largest loan, there 
were twenty-one million subscribers, or one of every five inhab- 
itants.) Besides all this, vast sums were loaned to the govern- 
ment in even smaller amounts, by the purchase of Thrift Stamps 



WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 85 

(25 cents each) and War Savings Stamps ($5), — an effective 
way of encouraging small savings. 

The amazing success of these loans — which for the most 
part were heavily oversubscribed — is the more marked be- 
cause the interest was low and because money at that time could 
earn much higher return in many other ways. 

But we had to raise money also by taxation. The first War War taxes 
Revenue bill provided for direct taxes to raise two and a half 
billions a year, and a subsequent bill increased the amount to 
more than four billions a year. Half of this came from a 
graduated income tax and allied taxes (an inheritance tax, and 
an " excess profits " tax). The income tax took 2 per cent of 
a small income l and rose by steep degrees to 65 per cent of very 
large incomes. Moreover, large amounts were raised by a 
" luxury tax," payable on a great variety of articles of clothing 
costing more than a certain price. In general, a serious effort 
was made by America to arrange the system of taxes so that 
for the first time in the world, the cost of war should not fall 
mainly on the working classes. 

England needed our cotton and wheat, and France and Saving food 

Italv could not fight longer without our iron and coal as well. and " dom 8 
mi , ■ • without," to 

These things we strove to send. But all the Allies, stripped of f ee d our 

their own farm workers, needed American food ; and our poor Allies 
harvest in 1917 left us no surplus above our ordinary consumption. 
This was an alarming condition. To meet it, Congress gave 
the President extraordinary powers over the nation's resources. 
The President created a Food Commission, headed by Herbert C. 
Hoover, an American business man and engineer, who for the 
three years preceding had shown signal administrative ability 
and devotion to humanity as head of the American Relief Com- 
mission in starving Belgium. (When we entered the war, 
Mr. Hoover and his American associates in Belgium had been 
obliged to return to the United States.) 



1 Each taxpayer was allowed $1000 income exempt from taxation; 
husband and wife, $2000 ; and $200 more was exempt for each minor child. 



86 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



War prof- 
iteering 
largely held 
in check 



This Commission, by spreading information broadcast and 
by skillful appeals kept everywhere before the eye, induced the 
American people voluntarily and cheerfully to limit its con- 
sumption, and especially to " save the waste." Wheatless and 
meatless days each week, agreed upon according to the Com- 
mission's " request " and enforced by public opinion, and a 
rigid limit on the amount of sugar allowed to any locality, made 
it possible for our government to export huge amounts of these 
three most essential foods for the peoples whose armies were 
fighting our battles in Europe. 

By saving waste, and by using substitutes, we cut down our 
use of wheat for one year almost half ; and the half so saved 
gave to every person in England, France, and Italy almost as 
much as we used at home. We had less than 20 millions of 
bushels to export in 1917, if we used as much as usual at home ; 
but, by doing without, we did export 141 million bushels. 

To prevent this European demand from raising prices 
exorbitantly, and to check speculation in foodstuffs, the Com- 
mission took important steps in fixing fair prices and in regulat- 
ing profits. This last, it must be said, was not wholly success- 
ful. Congress had not given the President power enough, 
vast as was his power. The price of wheat flour was fixed ; 
but many millers took advantage of the patriotic determination 
of the country to use cheaper grain, like rye flour and oatmeal, 
by raising the prices of these flours exorbitantly. This was one 
instance of disgraceful "profiteering." There were others; 
and the government did not prove strong enough successfully 
to prosecute and punish any big profiteer. Still, on the whole, 
the record of the " big-money " interests in the war was ex- 
tremely creditable (although we did have 17,000 more million- 
aires when the war closed than when we began). 



War saving The above statement regarding the savings brought about 

a demo- among the people by voluntary consent is bv no means com- 

cratic, vol- mi • ^a /~i n 

untary plete. The woman s committees of the Defense Councils 

movement issued cook books to show the housewife how to save and how 



WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 87 

to use what had previously gone to the garbage can. In 1918, 
on the advice of the National Commercial Economy Board, 
manufacturers of clothing put forth fewer and simpler styles, 
omitting all needless buttons, frills, belts, collars, and so on. 
This alone saved millions of yards of cloth — fifteen per cent, 
it is estimated, of the cloth usually needed for men's clothing, 
and twenty-five per cent for women's. 

Along with this saving, went also, of course, work for in- 
creased production. Farmers increased their acreage for the 
most needed crops, receiving from State or Nation necessary 
advances in money for seed or machinery. Needed farm labor 
was furnished by volunteer school boys — who were allowed 
school credits for the time so spent. And a vast amount of 
food was raised in new " war gardens " on small private grounds 
which before had been devoted, very rightfully, to beauty and 
pleasure. 

To carry these supplies to Europe in spite of the ravages of Shipbuilding 
submarines a new Shipping Board built ships on a scale beyond 
all precedent. First of all, new shipyards had to be built, 
and whole new cities to house the tens of thousands of new 
shipbuilders — who in turn had to be trained for their new work. 
Like much else in our haste, all this was not done without some 
sad blunders and much extravagance. But it was done, and done 
swiftly. In less than a year, America's new plants were turning 
out ships much faster than England's centuries-old yards had 
ever launched them. The new shipyards beat the submarine — 
and America could afford some extravagance in that work in 
return for speed. 

Transportation at home had its own problems. The rail- The rail- 
roads began to break down almost at once under the increased 
business imposed upon them by the war ; and the nation felt 
keenly the waste of so many non-cooperating systems. In 
December of the first year, Congress passed a law turning the 
railroads over to the government (guaranteeing profits to the 
owners), which began to operate them as one system for the 



road 



88 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Saving coal 
and gasoline 



period of the war. Telegraph and express companies also 
passed into government hands. 

The mines were not ready on short notice to supply coal as 
fast as war needs called for it. Hard coal for ship and railroads 
and for many war industries we had to have. Accordingly the 
government regulated its private use. People learned to save 
fuel, to heat their houses and offices only to 65° instead of to 
70° or 72°, and many changed their heating plants so as to use 
soft coal or wood. For many weeks in 1918, at the request of 
the government, churches were closed, and stores, amusement 
halls, and most industries were closed on certain days of the 
week, to save coal. People grumbled a little, but joked and 
assented. A little later, to save gasoline needed in France for 
tanks and auto-trucks and aeroplanes, " gasless Sunday " took 
its recognized place alongside " heatless," " wheatless," and 
" meatless " days, — all essentially on government recommen- 
dation only. 

In zeal to secure more rapid output of war supplies, some 
States began to repeal existing laws limiting hours of labor for 
women and children. Organized labor protested wisely, and 
the government stepped in to check this disastrous tendency — 
which had already been tried and abandoned in England. The 
important thing was, not to " speed up " production for a few 
weeks, at cost of a long let down afterward, but rather to " keep 
fit," to keep labor at the top notch of vitality, to gear our in- 
dustry for a long hard pull, not for a short spurt. Said President 
Wilson, in a telgram to one State governor : 

" It would be most unfortunate for any of the States to relax 
the laws by which safeguards have been thrown about labor. 
I feel that there is no necessity for such action. It would lead 
to a slackening of the energy of the nation, rather than to an 
increase, besides being unfair to the workers." 

The selec- It was necessary that America should give of her manhood as 
* nd ' d t raft we ^ as °^ ner wea lth- S° far as results go, that story has been 
success told in preceding pages. Here we may briefly note the method. 



Labor 

standards 

saved 



WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 89 

At the declaration of war, eager volunteers pressed forward 
for army and navy; but what was needed was more than 
individual volunteers. America needed a wise use of the whole 
nation's resources, each man being assigned the job he could do 
best. And so, May 18, 1917, the " selective draft " became 
law. Every man and youth from 18 to 45 (by the first law only 
from 21 to 31) was required to register in his county seat, giving, 
in answer to a questionnaire, full information about his character, 
training, health, and ability. All were liable for service : the 
President was to lay down principles upon which to select for 
service in the ranks those best fitted, or most easily spared from 
other service. 

Before the end of the year, half a million soldiers were train- 
ing in fifty swiftly built camps — each camp a new city — largely 
under officers who had been trained earlier in the year in new 
officers' training camps ; and some 300,000 were already in 
France, receiving the finishing touches to their training just 
behind the trenches. When the armistice came, a year later, 
we had three million men under arms, of whom more than two 
million were doing splendid work in France. It is hard to say 
whether the Kaiser or we ourselves were the more astounded 
at the swift making of an American army. 

Along with this national activity, there was a vast volunteer Local ac- 
activity by local democracies, always looking gladly to Washing- tmties 
ton for advice and direction, but also quite ready to trust to 
their own initiative if needful. Each State had its Council of 
Defense (modeled on the Council of National Defense). Most 
of these were well supplied with State funds ; and many of them 
did exceedingly useful work in promoting unity, arousing 
interest, and suppressing possible treason within their States. 
Below each State Council, and in constant touch with it, were 
county and village councils of like character. In rural dis- 
tricts, the schoolhouse was usually the center for such bodies 
to meet, as well as for local chapters of the Red Cross and for 
war lectures. 



90 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Even more significant than these public organizations, were 
the thousands of canvassing boards that served in the draft 
without pay ; the examining boards of busy physicians, who 
gave their time freely to secure the physical fitness of the soldiers ; 
the volunteer bodies of village teachers, working Saturdays, 
Sundays, and nights, to classify the results of draft ques- 
tionnaires ; the Red Cross societies in every neighborhood ; 
and the volunteer canvassers for Liberty Bond sales, wherein 
the Boy Scouts had a fine share. Democracy proved that, 
when attacked, it could put aside its ordinary life of work and 
play, to take on war activities with resolution, efficiency, and 
unanimity unexcelled. 



True, there were some blots on this splendid record. Here 
and there, selfish or stupid politicians sought personal popu- 
larity by wrapping their country's flag about them, or tried to 
discredit or destroy rivals by false accusations of lack of patriot- 
ism. In the heat of war passion, some grave injustices were 
committed ; and some foolish offenders were punished too 
severely. Mob violence, even, was permitted, and in some 
cases against thoroughly patriotic men falsely accused by 
personal enemies. The method by which poor people were 
sometimes intimidated into taking more bonds than they could 
afford did not suit well the name Libert}/ for those bonds. These 
things America will regret ; but, spite of such blemishes, the 
history is a proud one. 

It will not do to omit mention of woman's share in the war. 
In all the good work described above, she had a part. But 
we must remember further that, in America as elsewhere, behind 
each man who took up a rifle there stood a woman to take up 
the work he laid down. Even in America, women ran elevators, 
street cars, and motor busses, and took up new and heavy work 
in factories, — especially in munition factories and in air-craft 
building. In England, as her men were drained away, five 
million women took up men's work, — an Earl's daughter 
sometimes toiliner in a munition factorv at the same bench with 



WAR EFFICIENCY OF A DEMOCRACY 91 

a working girl from the streets. And in America, in twenty 
states, college girls enlisted in the " Woman's Land Army," 
for outdoor farm work. 

Nor was it only in manual toil that these new workers played 
a new part. Many kinds of office work and business manage- 
ment were taken over by women with marked success — as 
well as much of the organization and most of the work of the 
Red Cross both in America and with the American army in 
France. 

In all countries this war efficiency of women gave the final 
impetus to the movement for equal suffrage. The last " argu- 
ment " against suffrage — the silly plea that a woman ought 
not to vote because she could not fight — was proved false. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 

January 18, 1871, the first German Emperor placed the new 
imperial crown upon his own head at Versailles, Avhile his 
victorious armies were still besieging Paris. January 18, 1919, 
the Peace Congress opened its meetings in the same room of 
the Versailles Palace, to reconstruct Europe after the fall of 
the German Empire. 
Attempts at There was supreme need of reconstruction. Central Europe 
class Tule in nac ^ broken into fragments, and each fragment was tossing 
Central helplessly on waves of revolution. In Germany an extreme 

wing of the Socialists, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem- 
burg, were planning a second revolution to take power from 
the "Conservative Socialists" of the Provisional Government 
into the hands of the working class. Those two leaders, 
splendidly fearless, had been foremost in all Germany in oppos- 
ing Prussian militarism before the war ; l and Liebknecht had 
spent most of the war years in prison as a traitor to German 
autocracy, because he had dared to oppose the war even after it 
began. Freed by the fall of autocracy, he now taught that 
selfish capitalist and imperialist forces would try to make a 
peace of plunder. Only a workingman's government in Ger- 
many, he preached, and the spread of such a government into 
France and England, could secure a lasting peace based on 
justice and righteousness. 

This mistaken doctrine, however honest in the leaders, was 
suited for use by selfishness, ignorance, and passion. Accord- 
ingly in several large German cities, especially in Berlin, 



1 See C. Altschul's German Militarism and its German Critics, War Infor- 
mation Series, No. 13. 

92 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 93 

"Soldiers and Workingmen's Councils" seized the government 
in the interest, not of democracy, but of "class" rule. These 
bodies were attacked promptly by the regular troops, which for 
the most part remained true to the Provisional Government. 
Thousands fell in bloody street fights, marked by the use of 
poison gas, machine guns, and liquid fire. The superior equip- 
ment of the government forces in all such respects triumphed ; 
and Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were taken prisoners — 
and brutally murdered by their guards. 1 

Then in January, 1919, Germany held an election for a German 
National Assembly. By a new franchise law promulgated by A g*g^iy 
the Provisional Government, all men and women over 19 years of 1919 
of age had been given the vote, and an excellent system of 
"proportional representation" secured due weight to minority 
parties. The result was a clear victory for a union of Moderate 
Socialists ("Majority Socialists") and "German Democrats" 
(the old Liberals). 

To avoid revolutionary dangers, the Assembly met at Weimar 
instead of at Berlin. By a 3 to 1 vote, it chose Ebert (once a 
saddler) president of the German Republic (February 11), 
organized under a coalition cabinet led by Philip Scheidemann, 
and discussed a new permanent constitution while waiting 
for peace terms from the Allies. 

Through the winter and spring, this government was con- 
stantly threatened by further revolution. Factories could 
not open for lack of cotton, or rubber, or iron, or capital, or 
markets in which to sell goods. Germany's ships had been 
taken by the Allies, to help replace those her submarines had 
sunk, and the Allied blockade had been lifted only far enough 
to permit the introduction of some foods, — not enough to 
restore any real trade with the world. Under these conditions, 
new proletarian revolutions took place in some of the states, — rian Rev0 . 
especially in Bavaria, where a workingman's government main- lution 

1 Some of the assassins were obliged to go through the form of a trial. 
Two were sentenced to two years' imprisonment: but the next day one of 
these "escaped," — a fitting conclusion to the farce of the trial. 



94 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

tained itself ably for several weeks, until crushed, after the assas- 
sination of its leader, Kurt Eisner, by the union of all other forces. 1 

An American newspaper correspondent and editor describes 
for his paper the session of the Bavarian legislature February 
22, 1919. He had just entered the newspaper gallery for the 
first time. "The correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung 
kindly pointed out the various dignitaries. That Minister 
on the right was a locksmith's apprentice a little while ago. 
Timm, Minister of Education, on the left, is a tailor's son 
and was long a public school teacher ; Suer, there, about whose 
head the storm is raging, is the son of a sewing woman. He 
left school at eleven to be a herd boy for eleven years. . . . 
Several women delegates came in. Now they are all here 
except the President, Kurt Eisner (who had been a poor news- 
paper man). Then a young man rushes in, pale as a sheet, 
and a voice calls ' Kurt Eisner has been shot.' ' 

The old German Austria became a republic, and the govern- 
ment voted repeatedly in favor of joining Germany ; but France 
was unwilling to see Germany so strengthened ; and, as a result, 
Austria, too, has been threatened with a proletarian revolution. 
Hungary Hungary had become a republic under enlightened middle- 

and Austria c i ass control. The President, the liberal-minded Count Karolyi, 
voluntarily gave up his princely domain for common use, and 
plead with the Allies for terms that might make the new govern- 
ment secure. The delay of the Allies in relieving the country, 
so that it might get food and work, led after a few weeks to 
a further revolution, — perfectly bloodless this time, — which 
put in power a proletarian dictatorship under Bela Kun, similar 
to the Bolshevist rule in Russia. This has just given way 
(August, 1919), under Allied pressure, to a more moderate 
Socialist rule. Moreover Roumania had taken advantage of 



1 The German Republic will be a federal state. Of course each state had 
already put off the old monarchic government. In Prussia, for instance, 
the Upper House of the legislature had been abolished, and the Lower House 
was now elected by universal franchise — which included women. 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 



95 



the woes of Hungary to declare war upon that country, and 
continued her invasion even after the Hungarian government 
declared its willingness to cede all its Roumanian lands — until 
the Peace Congress called a halt. 

All the other lands of the old "Central Empire" had already 
fallen away, but not into peace. An enlarged and free Bohemia 




(the Czecho-Slav Republic) was practically at war not merely 
with Germany and Austria, but also with the new Polish Repub- 
lic, over conflicting boundary claims ; and this new Poland, 
under the leadership of Paderewski, the famous pianist, had 
other contests with Russian Bolsheviki on one side and with 
Germany on the remaining land frontier, besides being torn by 



96 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

internal factions and busied in massacring its Jews. To the 
south of old Austria, there had appeared a Jugo-Slav republic 
by the long sought union of Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, and 
Slovenes; but this enlarged Serbia and Italy were in battle 
array, daily in peril of war, over the Adriatic coast ; while Italy 
and Greece were at daggers' points regarding South Albania, 
the islands of the iEgean, and the shores of Asia Minor. 

No one of these countries felt any trust in the honor of any 
other. Each believed that every one would hold what he could 
lay hands on, and so sought to lay his own hands on as much 
as possible before the day of settlement. The Peace Congress 
had its work cut out for it. 
The Peace That famous gathering contained the leading statesmen of 

Congress the world The United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, 
and Japan each sent five delegates. England's colonies, too, 
were represented, — two each from Canada, Australia, South 
Africa, and India, and one from New Zealand. Eighteen other 
governments, which had taken part in the war upon the side of 
the Allies, were allowed from one to three delegates each. Each 
delegation voted as a unit. Countries that had been neutral 
were also invited to send representatives to be called in when- 
ever matters arose that specially concerned them. The four 
"enemy countries" and Russia were allowed no part. A strik- 
ing feature of the gathering was the great number of expert 
assistants accompanying their representatives. The United 
States delegation alone was aided by more than a hundred 
prominent men, most of them eminent authorities on the his- 
tory or geography or economic resources of European lands. 
Woodrow President Wilson himself headed the American delegation, — 

Wilson at m S pit e f vehement opposition to his leaving his own country 
for so long a time. In like manner, Lloyd George and Orlando, 
the English and Italian premiers, represented their lands ; and 
Clemenceau, head of the French delegation, was naturally 
chosen president of the Assembly. These men made up "the 
Big Four." Part of the time this inner circle became the "Big 
Five" by the inclusion of the Japanese representative. 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 97 

From the first it was plain that even within the Big Four 
there were critical differences. Mr. Wilson had promised the 
world, Germany included, "a permanent peace based on un- 
selfish, unbiased justice," and "a new international order based 
upon broad universal principles of right." To such ends he in- 
sisted, (1) that the first step must be the organization of a 
League of Nations, a World federation ; and (2) that all nego- 
tiations should be public — " open covenants, openly arrived at." 

At times, Lloyd George seemed heartily to adopt this same Lloyd 
program; but he was seriously hampered by the fact that a^cT 
in the campaign for parliamentary elections, in December, he menceau 
had won by appeals to the worst war passions of the English 
people, even promising preposterously that Germany should 
pay "the whole cost of the war." The other leaders never had 
any real faith in the Wilson program. In Clemenceau's words, 
they looked upon President Wilson as a benevolent dreamer 
of Utopias, and they preferred to rest all rearrangements upon 
the old European methods of rival alliances to maintain a balance 
of power — a plan which had been tried, only to prove through 
bloody centuries a seed bed of war. 

Moreover France was dissatisfied and panicky. Germany, Govern- 
prostrate for the moment, still bordered upon her, with a popu- ^J 1 ^ *° n 
lation and resources a half greater than her own. So it is easy Europe 
to understand that many French statesmen should have wished 
above all things to deal with Germany by German methods 
— to make her helpless by dismembering her and by plundering 
her through indemnities, and to build up the new Poland and 
Bohemia by giving them enough German territory so that they 
might always be fearful of Germany and therefore hostile to her. 
Such states on the east, with France on the west, could then 
hold Germany in a vise between them. 

Such a program meant the perpetuation of the old European 
system of alliances, armed camps, and, sooner or later, of war. 
But by the war-weary peoples, if not by the governments of 
Europe, the Wilson program of a just peace and a world-league 
was at first hailed with joy. Mr. Wilson had arrived in Europe 



98 THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 

several weeks before the opening of the Congress, for conferences 
with European statesmen ; and everywhere in his journey — in 
England, France, Italy — he was welcomed by the working 
classes with remarkable demonstrations of respect and affec- 
tion, as " the president of all of us," as the Italians put it, — as 
the apostle of world peace and of human brotherhood. For 
a time it looked possible for him, at a crisis, to override the hostile 
attitude of the governments by appealing over their heads to 
the people themselves: and indeed in a great speech at Milan 
— just after .some slurring attacks upon him by French states- 
men — he hinted pointedly at such a possible program. 
Mr. Wilson But as months passed in wearisome negotiations, this popular 

weakened fervor wasted away, and in each nation bitter animosities began 

by events . . . 

at home to show toward neighboring and allied peoples. Moreover 

Mr. Wilson had been fatally weakened in Europe by events at 
home. Late in the campaign for the new Congressional elec- 
tions in the preceding November, he had made a special and 
ill-judged appeal to the country for indorsement of his policies 
by a Democratic victory. But the elections instead gave both 
Houses to the Republicans; and the jubilant victors, charging 
vengefully that the President had set an example of political 
partisanship, entered upon a bitter course of criticism and 
obstruction. Mr. Wilson's European opponents made the most 
of this — if indeed they did not, as many thought, have a 
positive part in starting it. 
Secret Mr. Wilson's first defeat at Paris was in the matter of secret 

negotiations negotiation. To save time, it was necessary no doubt for the 
Peace Congress to do most of its work in small committees. 
But it would have been possible to lessen bargaining and in- 
trigue by having such meetings open, or at least by having sten- 
ographic reports of each meeting. Mr. Wilson, however, 
allowed the Old World diplomats — with their tradition of 
baekstair intrigue — to outgeneral him into consenting to 
only one public and general meeting each week. The result 
was that, from the first, the real work was done by the inner 
circle of four or five in secret conclave (with the addition of 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 00 

several advisory secret committees on special matters) ; and 
instead of even the promised open meeting once a week there 
were during the entire five months (January 18 — June 28) 
only four such meetings — and these not really for discussion 
but merely to ratify conclusions arrived at by the Big Four. 

The next point Mr. Wilson won. It was agreed that the Agreement 
first business of the Congress should be to provide a League j° ra f 
of Nations. With such a league to guarantee peace, to secure Nations 
disarmament, and to punish any bully or robber state, it was 
hoped that France and Italy might trust to a just and merciful 
peace, instead of insisting upon a peace of vengeance and booty. 
Many voices, in France and in the United States Senate, had 
been raised in protest, urging instead, as German statesmen had 
urged while they felt themselves victorious, that such a league 
should come only after a treaty of peace. But Mr. Wilson 
argued that the League would expedite, not hinder, the peace 
treaty, since it was a necessary prelude to any right sort of 
peace. This view prevailed. 

While a committee of fourteen nations, headed by Mr. Spoils or 
Wilson, was preparing the covenant, or constitution, of the J ustice 
League, the American President won what seemed for a time 
another great victory. The first discussions regarding terri- 
torial changes showed the usual disposition on the part of the 
victors to grab spoils. France talked of the necessity that she 
acquire all German territory west of the Rhine, "her natural 
frontier," so that in future wars that great river might serve 
as a protective ditch. Marshal Foch supported this plea for 
military reasons. This of course would have transferred several 
millions of unwilling Germans to French rule. 

Italy, too, advanced new claims on the Adriatic at the ex- 
pense of the new South Slav state. And it became plain that the 
imperfectly known "secret treaties," under which Italy and 
Japan had entered the war, had provided for a far-reaching 
division of spoils not only at the expense of Germany but also 
to the danger of future wars. Enough news leaked out from the 
secret conclaves to make it certain that President Wilson at 



100 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



once denounced these projects, and declared he would have 
no part in a " Congress for booty." At one time, indeed, when 
the Italian delegates insisted strenuously upon Croatian Fiume 
(the natural door of the South Slavs to the Adriatic), he cabled 
to America for his ship — a plain threat that he would leave 
Paris rather than assent. England and France then gave him 
their support, and this particular act of plunder was avoided — 
even though Orlando did for a while leave the Congress in pro- 
test. Unhappily in other cases Mr. Wilson was not always so 
resolute. Victory over Fiume was followed by defeat over 
Shantung (p. 10.3). 

For a moment England seemed to hold the key to the 
situation. The secret treaties had assumed that she would 
retain the great bulk of the German colonies. For this there 
would have been much excuse. She had proved her eminent 
fitness for control of tropical colonies ; and some of the con- 
quered districts — if a state of war was to be looked upon as 
probable in the future — were essential to the safety of her other 
dominions. Indeed the South African and Australian repre- 
sentatives at Paris faced political death if they returned home 
without German Southwest Africa and German New Guinea 
in their pockets. But Lloyd George came loyally to Wilson's 
side. Unless England renounced her conquests for the general 
good, there was no escape from an old-fashioned peace of plun- 
der; if she did renounce them, there seemed good hope that 
England and the United States together might persuade the 
other Allies to yield their selfish and injurious claims under the 
secret treaties. And renounce the colonies England did — 
though the renunciation was accompanied by the suggestion of 
mandatories, responsible to the coming League of Nations. 

In March, while other negotiations dragged along, the commit- 
tee on the League of Nations made its report, and the Congress 
enthusiastically adopted the proposed constitution. The chief 
opposition to the proposal appeared in the United States Senate, 
where leading Republicans tried to make it a party question. 
This was rendered difficult, happily, by the splendid work of ex- 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 101 

President Taft, head of the American League to Enforce Peace, 
who, with a group of leading Republicans, toured the country 
to secure support for the covenant. The opposition was suffi- 
cient, however, so that after a few weeks, the Peace Congress 
revised the document in a few details. 

The revised covenant is clear and brief. The union is very- 
loose, and its managing bodies are not really a government. 
The forty-five "charter members" include all organized govern- 
ments except Russia, the four "enemy countries," Costa Rica, 
San Domingo, and Mexico ; and there is a way provided for 
admitting these in time. Amendments require the unanimous 
consent of the five big states with a majority of all states ; and 
the unanimous consent of all nations in the League is demanded 
for any other action of consequence, except that no party to a 
dispute has a voice in its settlement. Among the most valuable 
provisions of the "Covenant" are the prohibition of all secret 
treaties in future and the clauses providing for disarmament, 
for regulation of the manufacture of munitions of war, for 
compulsory arbitration, and for delay in recourse to war even if 
an arbitration is unsatisfactory. A reservation of the Monroe 
Doctrine, inserted in the second draft as a sop to American 
opposition, suggests, by its unfortunate phrasing, a continuation 
of the pernicious doctrine of " spheres of influence," and satisfies 
neither advocates nor opponents of the League. Much debated, 
too, is Article X, which guarantees to each state its territorial 
integrity against external attack. Mr. Wilson wrote the origi- 
nal of this Article, — but in a very different form, suggesting 
especially the desirability of future peaceful correction of terri- 
torial boundaries by the League of Nations. In the present 
form, many critics fear, the Article may be a serious barrier to 
needed readjustments. 

The value of the League will depend upon how it is worked. The Ger- 
Mean while, to secure a League, Mr. Wilson "traded" many of man rea ^ 
his principles in the making of the peace treaties. Early in May 
the treaty of peace with Germany was handed to the German 



102 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



delegates, who had been summoned to Paris to sign for their 
country. The treaty makes a good-sized book. Only a few 
points can be stated here. A typical one relates to the Saar 
Valley, a small strip of German territory just east of Alsace. 

Germany is to cede the rich coal mines of this region to France, 
in rightful reparation of her wanton destruction of French 
coal mines. Unhappily France insisted long upon political 
sovereignty over the territory and people, along with this 
property. This claim was not granted ; but an unsatisfactory 
compromise places the valley for fifteen years under an Inter- 
national Commission. At the end of that time the inhabitants 
are to vote whether they will return to Germany or join France. 
If they decide for their own country, Germany must at once 
buy up France's claim to the coal mines. This may be difficult 
for her to do ; but if she fails to do it, the territory passes at 
once and permanently to France. 

This " veiled annexation" of half a million Germans to a 
foreign power, against their will, is in sharp defiance of the prin- 
ciple of "self-determination," — and it was wholly unnecessary. 
France ought to have the coal ; but title to that could have been 
guaranteed safely, under the League of Nations, without this 
transfer of political allegiance. And the Saar Valley arrange- 
ment is merely one of several like or worse arrangements. The 
new Poland gets not merely the Polish territory long held by 
Prussia, to which she is entitled, but also large strips of German 
territory, like Upper Silesia (with its two million people), which 
she wants solely because of its mines. Moreover, in order to give 
Poland easy access to the sea, by the route of the Vistula, Ger- 
man Dantzig is made a "free" city, against its will. Besides 
these displeasing provisions, Germany very properly not only 
returns Alsace-Lorraine to France and (with a favorable vote 
of the inhabitants) Danish Sleswig to Denmark, but also cedes 
to Belgium three small pieces of territory populated mainly 
by people of Belgian blood. In addition to all this, if the in- 
habitants so vote, she is to cede to Poland considerable territory 
east of the Vistula. In all, Germany loses outright 35,000 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 103 

square miles, with a probable loss (by plebiscites) of nearly 
20,000 more — in all, a territory about the extent of Penn- 
sylvania, and more than a fifth of the old Germany. Even 
this is not enough to satisfy the French government. That 
government has failed to get recognition for its claim to the 
Rhine districts of Germany; but attempts, which may yet 
succeed, have been fomented by French agents to induce this 
part of Germany to secede and form a separate state. 

Besides all this, Germany has lost her vast colonial empire. The old 
This is well. But, instead of being placed directly under the of °e"^ aiiy 
guardianship of the League of Nations until they can walk alone, 
the former German colonies are turned over, part to England, 
part to Japan, according to the terms of a secret treaty of 1914 
between those countries. True, England and Japan are " manda- 
tories" of the League of Nations; but that arrangement is left 
so vague and loose that it looks like little more than a scheme 
for the division of spoils — and Japan surely has shown herself 
(in Korea) as unfit to rule subject-peoples as ever Germany was. 

In this connection Americans are especially chagrined The 
that Japan succeeds also to all Germany's indefinite ma tter 
"rights" in the Shantung Peninsula, against the futile 
protest of China. True, Japan has promised vaguely that 
her political occupation shall be "temporary"; but that 
word has been used too often as a prelude to permanent 
grabs of territory. To allow the one remaining despotic 
and military power in the world so to seize the door to 
China is not merely to betray a faithful ally, but also 
to renounce a plain and wise American policy in the 
Orient. 

Very objectionable, too, are the economic, provisions of the 
German treaty. Germany is to pay fixed reparations amount- 
ing to about 30 billions of dollars during the next fifteen years. 
This is severe, but on the whole it is just. However, Germany is 
to pay further indefinite amounts, to be determined in future 
by a commission of her conquerors. This provision, along with 



104 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



accompanying rules regarding German taxation, leaves Ger- 
many's head in a noose which English or French jealousy may 
tighten at will. 



" Liberal " 
criticism 
of the 

treaty 



The treaty has been denounced vehemently by many earnest 
thinkers in all lands as breaking faith with a beaten and sub- 
missive foe, and, still more, as fruitful of future wars. Nine 
of the experts attached to the American Commission were so 
disappointed that they resigned their positions in protest; 
and General Smuts, the hero of South Africa, when signing for 
that country, declared in a formal statement that he signed only 
because of the absolute necessity of immediate peace for Europe 
and because he hoped that the most objectionable provisions 
might be modified in future by the League of Nations. Or- 
ganized labor in England and France made earnest protests also 
against the violations in the treaty of the principle of self- 
determination. 

This opposition has little or nothing to do with any sym- 
pathy for Germany : it is based upon a conviction that the 
terms are bad for the world at large, or that they are dishon- 
orable to the Allies. But a stern peace was to be expected, 
and in the conflict of so many claims, some unsatisfactory pro- 
visions were sure to appear. Probably the majority of the 
people in the Allied lands still feel that Germany is getting off 
too easily. 

The German delegates made many protests, and did secure 
some very slight modifications in the terms. Then they re- 
fused to sign. But a new Cabinet came into power, and, June 
28, a new set of German delegates signed the treaty. The 
five years' war was ended. A few days later, the German 
assembly ratified the peace by a two-to-one vote. The English 
Parliament approved it even more unanimously. At this writ- 
ing (July 25) the United States Senate has not come to a vote 
upon the matter — because of the intertwining of the League of 
Nations with the peace — but commercial intercourse with Ger- 
many has been restored. 



THE WORLD LEAGUE AND NEW EUROPE 105 

Late in July, after the return of President Wilson to America, The 
the treaty with Austria was completed at Paris. Austria her- V 6 ** 7 - Wlth 
self is left a petty state of 7,000,000 people, grouped around 
Vienna, shut off from the sea, with little excuse for a separate 
political existence. The Austrians very naturally wish incor- 
poration with Germany. Germany also desires it ; but at French 
insistence, the Peace Congress has forbidden this application of 
the principle of "self-determination." The other precise ter- 
ritorial terms of the treaty are not yet made public. The most 
delicate concern the frontier between the new South Slav state 
and Italy. In general the treaty has the same traits as does the 
treaty with Germany. 

The treaties with Bulgaria and with Turkey are still to be Remaining 
worked out. The latter will care for important problems such Problems 

clt "AXIS 

as the disposition of Constantinople, of Armenia, of Palestine, 
and of the rich valley of the Euphrates. At the conclusion of 
peace with Germany the great statesmen left the Peace Con- 
gress, to attend to pressing needs in their own parliaments ; but 
the remaining delegates at Paris will probably be busied for 
many weeks in settling these remaining matters. 



CHAPTER XII 

HEALING FORCES 

The cost of The war was a world war : Eight out of every nine men on 

the war £ ne gl be belonged to the warring nations. It cost nine million 

lives and 200 billion dollars. A vast portion of all the wealth 

stored up laboriously through centuries is consumed, and over 

wide areas all the machinery for producing wealth is gone. 

The United States had relatively small sacrifices to make. 
We entered late, and our borders were remote from the struggle. 
Still, eighty thousand American boys lie in French soil, and thrice 
as many were horribly maimed. As to money, aside from the 
immense sums raised by war taxes, our war debt is nearly 
twenty-five billions, besides some nine billions more that our 
The cost government borrowed from our people to loan to England, 
still to be France, Belgium, and Italy. On these loans the Allied govern- 
ments will pay the interest, and possibly sometime they will be 
able to repay the principal ; but on the remaining twenty-five 
billions the interest alone will each year exceed the total yearly 
expenditure of our government before the war. Without paying 
a cent of the principal, we will have to tax ourselves each year 
twice as much as ever before for our national government. 

But we must also pay the principal. If we pay it in one 
generation (as probably we will), that will mean one billion 
more of taxes a year. As we pay the principal, the interest 
will lessen ; but, taking into account the increased cost of living 
for the government, it is safe to say that for the next twenty-five 
years we must raise three billion dollars a year, — or three 
fourths as much as in the war years themselves. We have 
boasted that in this country the war has been paid for by the 
wealthy classes, not by the poor. But so far (1919) we have 

106 



HEALING FORCES 107 

"hardly begun to pay that cost : if our boast is to be made good, 
we must raise more than two thirds of our taxes during the 
next years by income and luxury taxes. 

In Europe the burden is terrifying. Words cannot express Conditions 
the ruin there ; and the huge totals of indebtedness in France, in urope 
England, and Germany have little meaning to us. Factories 
are gone ; shipping is sunk ; raw materials for manufactures 
are not available ; it seems almost impossible to start the wheels 
of industry again. Poverty and profound discouragement per- 
meate the masses of the people. England has suffered less than 
the continent ; but England's debt is enormous. Without pay- 
ing a penny of it, merely to keep up the interest and her old 
annual expenditure, she must raise more than five billions of 
dollars a year in taxes. With her smaller population, that 
means that each family must pay some four times as much as 
an American family. 

Still there is another side. The world is freed, we trust, Some last- 
from the perpetual cost of vast navies and crushing military ing gains 
establishments ; and it has learned fruitful lessons. In the 
preceding chapters we surveyed some of the forces that made for 
war efficiency. Many of these, and others apart from these, 
make also for healing and reconstruction in peace. 

The whole American people learned that when the rich 
family saved its fragments for a later meal, instead of casting 
them to the garbage can, some starving child in Europe had 
bread. We learned to do our daily work not so much for 
private gain as for the general good. We learned that every 
man who did not do work useful to society was a parasite, 
dangerous to society, whether he were a tramp or a millionaire. 
We learned that by cooperation, in place of wasteful compe- 
tition, we could enormously increase the productiveness of 
our labor and machinery, and that by wise direction we could 
find useful work for every worker. Lessons like these, after 
growing into our life for two years of war, must leave a mighty 
effect upon our life in peace. 



108 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



Lessons in 
human con- 
servation 



The Voca- 
tional Board 



New inter- 
est in child 
welfare 



And many other lessons of the war will count for peace. 
The medical examination of our drafted men revealed tens of 
thousands of cases of inefficiency and of wasted lives due to 
defective eyes or teeth or feet. Our doctors, dentists, and 
surgeons cured most of these cases, and augmented tremen- 
dously our righting power. Surely we will now find a way to 
use the same healing forces to augment our power for peaceful 
industry and to remove needless unhappiness. Indeed our 
schools in their new "health crusade" have already begun to 
remake our nation on a sounder basis of body. 

Very fruitful of good was the work of our National Board 
of Vocational Education. Many soldiers, by the loss of arms 
or legs or eyes, were disabled from ever taking up again the 
only work they had ever known. The Vocational Board of 
skilled experts educated and trained these disabled men, at 
government expense, for some new occupation for which they 
showed interest and fitness, making them useful and happy 
members of society instead of leaving them dependents and 
beggars. Many a real genius was thus enabled to do some 
work he had always longed to do but which he had never be- 
fore been able to get into. The results within even a few months 
were so incredibly beneficent that bills were introduced into 
both Houses of Congress in the winter of 1919 to preserve this 
Vocational organization for peace, that it might at public 
expense do the same invaluable and merciful work for the 
hundreds of thousands of our people who every year are maimed 
in accidents and in industry. The press of Congressional work 
at the end of the session prevented these bills from becoming 
law, but the attempt will be at once renewed. 

Still other features of this "human conservation" have 
promise for the future. In Europe there had been an alarming 
loss of man power due to slaughter in battle. Along with this 
was a falling off in the birth rate. These conditions threatened 
depopulation. Accordingly European governments were forced 
to legislate, more than ever before, for child welfare, — espe- 
cially for the saving of the lives and health of babies and mothers, 



HEALING FORCES 109 

with the use of public funds. Even in the stress of war, laws 
provided for reasonable rest for working mothers before and 
after the birth of a child, without loss of wages. Such civilized 
legislation has long been called for by enlightened opinion, and 
now it is sure to become universal. 

Very early, certain leaders sensed a danger that the tense Housing 
passion of war might blind us unduly to the rights of the work- movemen 
ing classes. In fighting to make the world safe for democracy it 
was supremely necessary to keep it safe for labor. For one 
illustration, the vast army of new workers in the shipyards 
and munition factories found no houses fit for their families, 
and were threatened with slum conditions of disease and squalor, 
besides paying exorbitant rates to greedy landlords. Accord- 
ingly a government's Housing Commission expended millions of 
dollars in building model homes for such workers. This has 
given an impulse, not to be wholly lost, to an old movement for 
better housing by the nation for the workers. 

More difficult to meet was another problem. Labor had to The War 
give up its usual weapon of strikes in disputes with employers. lf ho \ 
The public good demanded this. But labor could not be left 
to the mercy of employers. And so Congress and the President 
created a War Labor Board. This proved one of the most 
remarkable parts of the war government, exercising for two 
years an influence upon American life second only to that of 
the Supreme Court. Wages were rising rapidly ; and the pub- 
lic, only partially informed, could not easily understand that 
wages after all failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, 
and that workingmen were in danger of losing the standards of 
living that they had won in long years of effort. 

The War Labor Board acted as a compulsory arbitration 
board between Capital and Labor in those industries which 
concerned the carrying on of the war. President W'ilson ap- 
pointed ex-President Taft and Mr. Frank Walsh as joint 
chairmen, and the other members came in equal numbers 
from employers and labor representatives. The Board recog- 
nized the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively, 



110 



THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE 



The democ- 
ratization 
of industry 



the eight-hour day, a living wage, and the necessity of main- 
taining safeguards against accidents and disease, and it en- 
couraged in many industries the organization of "shop com- 
mittees" from the workmen to confer with the employers upon 
all shop conditions, — a great step toward democratizing 
industry. 

In its arbitrations, the Board itself had no power to enforce 
a decision, though in nearly every case both sides submitted 
at once to its award. But in some cases President Wilson 
found it needful to make the decisions compulsory by seizing 
for public use the factories whose owners refused compliance, 
or on the other side, by threatening strikers, who had refused 
an award, with military service, by withdrawing their exemption 
as married men. The judicial temper of Mr. Taft and his legal 
training and open-mindedness, made his services on this Board 
invaluable to the nation, and he won deep and lasting gratitude 
from organized labor for his understanding of their need. 

English employers and workers during the war agreed upon 
the principles of the famous "Whitley Report, 1 providing for 
the joint management of industries by Capital and Labor 
through joint councils of many grades. In the few months 
since the armistice, much has been done to extend and confirm 
this principle, and to provide against unemployment, to shorten 
the working day, and to guarantee a decent living wage to 
every man or woman willing to work. 

In the winter of 1918 the English Labor Party adopted an 
even more comprehensive plan 2 for reconstruction after the war, 
along the same line. This plan attracted wide and favorable 
attention, and in Minnesota a convention of Congregational 
churches declared it "the one great religious utterance of the 
war." It is deeply significant that many larger religious bodies 
have made like declarations if somewhat less emphatic ones, 
— especially the Catholic Church through a report of its Ad- 

1 Printed in full in No. 135 (February 1919) of the American Association 
for International Conciliation. 

2 Printed in the same. 



HEALING FORCES 111 

visory War Council, and the Methodist Church, both in Canada 
and the United States. 

In general these plans agree on the following points : 

1. Recognition that industry is designed for social service, 
not for private profiteering. 

2. A decent wage (not a bare living) for each worker. 

3. Insurance against unemployment, with wise provision 
by the government for using idle labor in housing enterprises 
and in land reclamation, and, if necessary, for shortening the 
working day. (There is no excuse for a long working day, for 
any laborer, say many of these recent programs, as long as 
another willing but idle worker is standing by, asking for work.) 

4. Democratizing industry, so as to give to the workers a 
share in management and some ownership in their jobs. 

5. Limitation of the profits of capital to a reasonable amount. 

6. The use of the surplus (above wages and "reasonable" 
profits) for the public good, — the surplus to be taken by 
extension of income taxes and by other new taxes on mining 
royalties, water power, and so on. 

7. The need of greater production by Labor — for which 
these other changes must provide powerful inducement. 

Five years ago these principles would have sounded wildly 
revolutionary : to-day society in general quietly assents to them. 

Stirring times are before us — times once more to try men's 
souls. Europe is still in desperate peril of social dissolution; 
even America is not wholly free from danger that social revolu- 
tion may destroy the wholesome and progressive evolution of 
our society ; and the world is not yet out of the peril of a 
frightful shortage of food. But men of faith believe that the 
outlook brightens, and that a new day is breaking. Especially 
do these new ideas regarding Labor and the new impulses to 
human conservation promise a world — such as our great leaders 
have pointed us toward through the war clouds — " safe for 
democracy " and " fit for heroes." 



ADVERTISEMENTS 



HISTORY 



American Government 

By Dr. Frank Abbott Magruder, of Princeton University. i2mo, 
cloth, 487 pages. 

THE practical value of the study of Civics is brought out in the 
treatment of every topic in the new American Government . 
One of the purposes of the book is so to equip pupils that they 
will be able to act with intelligence in the performance of their 
duties as citizens. 

While the importance to everyone of a good general govern- 
ment is made clear, our absolute dependence on local government 
is shown. Most excellent conditions at Washington cannot 
make comfortable a locality where local corruption causes the 
population to labor under disadvantages growing out of inade- 
quate sewers and bad water supply. 

Throughout the book the economic element in government is 
emphasized. That is, it is shown that most legislation origi- 
nates in the practical need for money in some part of the commu- 
nity. The book has a thorough treatment, not only of theoretical 
government, but especially of practical politics, caucuses, mark- 
ing ballots, registration. Woman suffrage and state prohibition 
are also discussed. 

The important bearing which government has on social condi- 
tions is emphasized by indicating its connection with good roads, 
with schools, and with regulation of commerce. 

The enormous influence of the judiciary is made clear, and it 
is shown how, through interpretation, they often legislate. It 
contains a frank discussion of the weaknesses of our government, 
as well as of its strong points. 

The book is beautifully illustrated with handsome half-tones, 
and contains a large number of maps, charts, and plans. The 
style is simple, direct, and informal, and well within the grasp of 
young pupils in the high school. As special aids to pupils and 
teachers, questions on the text and questions for discussion to 
show the local application of the text have been placed at the end 
of each chapter. 

101 



HISTORY 

History of the American People 

By Professor Willis Mason West, i 2m o, cloth, 790 pages. 

AN important feature of this new History is its practical 
character. Much attention is given to the great questions of 
to-day, and to those events in history which led up to them. The 
problems of labor and capital, and all those other matters which 
have to do with economic and industrial development, and with 
political growth, have a special emphasis. The book will equip 
the young learner with a thorough knowledge of present-day 
conditions, the causes which brought them about, and of the best 
means of improving them. It shows how political history is inter- 
woven with economic and social history. 

Emphasis is given to the development of the West, and it is 
made clear that most of the great problems before the Civil 
War grew out of conditions which arose in connection with the 
expansion of the United States toward the west. 

The History is equipped with more and better maps than will 
be found in other school histories. The text is handsomely illus- 
trated with many unique pictures. Few of the traditional illus- 
trations found in most United States histories have been used. 

The simple and direct language makes the book well within the 
comprehension of the young high school pupil. The arrange- 
ment is logical and the material is well organized. The author 
does not hesitate to show the weaknesses of democracy. This 
is done, however, in such a way as to leave the pupil with a robust 
and aggressive faith in our present form of government. 

This is the most up-to-date of the American histories. 

A Source Book in American History 

By Professor Willis Mason West. i2mo, cloth, 608 pages. 

THIS is a companion volume to History of the American 
People. It contains much material never before accessible to 
young students. No extract has been selected unless it has some 
definite articulation with the purpose of the main text. 

103 



HISTORY 

The Ancient World. Revised Edition 

By Professor Willis Mason West, of the University of Minnesota. 

Part One, Greece and the East. i2mo, cloth, 324 pages. 
Part Two, Rome and the West. i2mo, cloth, 371 pages. 
Complete Edition. i2mo, cloth, 681 pages. 

THE New Ancient World is well within the scope of the abili- 
ties of the youngest students in high schools and academies. 
Its style is simple, direct, vivid, and interesting, and never fails to 
impress even the most immature reader, who carries away from a 
study of this book a series of striking pictures of ancient life. 

The author emphasizes the unity in historical development; 
he shows that national life, like individual life, has continuous 
growth and development, and that a knowledge of the past ex- 
plains the present. Every experiment in government in ancient 
times has its lesson ; and in the hands of Professor West history 
becomes an instrument for teaching the duties of modern citizen- 
ship. 

(1) Most stress is laid on those periods and those persons 
who contributed most to the development of civilization. 

(2) Space is found for the exciting and the picturesque when- 
ever it is matter of historical importance. Narrative and biog- 
raphy abound. 

(3) Little weight is given to the legendary periods of Greek 
and Roman history, and the space thus gained is devoted to the 
wide-reaching Hellenic world after Alexander, and to the Roman 
Empire which had so deep an influence on later history. 

(4) In every paragraph the leading idea is brought out by 
italics, and illuminating quotations introduce many chapters. 

(5) The book teaches the use of a library by giving specific 
references to topics for reports. 

(6) There are forty-six maps and plans, which are made the 
basis of study, suggested by questions given in the text. There 
are also one hundred eighty-one illustrations taken from authentic 
sources. 

88 



HISTORY 

The Modern World 

By Professor W. M. WEST, i2mo, cloth, 794 pages. 

THIS volume, intended as a companion to the author's Ancient 
World, is a revision of his Modem History. 

As in the Ancient World, there has been a determined effort 
to make a simple history that can be easily understood b;< 
pupils in the early years of the High School. Interesting phases 
of history are given prominence, difficult ideas have been avoided, 
the language throughout is simple. 

One new feature of the Modern World is five preliminary 
chapters, giving an outline of history from prehistoric times to 
the accession of Charlemagne. These chapters serve as an 
excellent review for a course in Ancient History, or even make 
it possible to use the Modern World to cover the general history 
of the world. 

The book contains nearly two hundred handsome illustrations 
and is provided with fifty-three maps, all but five of which are colored. 

Like the Modern History the book gives especial prominence 
to the period since the French Revolution. The author treats 
with comparative briefness many phases of the history of the 
Middle Ages in order to gain adequate space for the marvellous 
nineteenth century, and so for an intelligent introduction to the 
twentieth. 

American Government 

By Dr. Frank Abbott Mauruder, i2mo, cloth, 488 pages. 

THE economic element in government is emphasized through- 
out this book. It has a thorough treatment, not only of 
theoretical government, but especially of practical politics, cau- 
cuses, marking ballots, registration. 

The enormous influence of the judiciary is made clear, and it 
is shown how, through interpretation, they often legislate. It 
contains a frank discussion of the weaknesses of our government, 
as well as of its strong points. 

89 



HISTORY 



A Short History of England 

By Charles M. Andrews, Farnam Professor of History in Yale 
University. With Maps, Tables, and numerous Illustrations. i2mo, 
cloth, 473 pages. 

THIS history of England aims to present within the compass 
of about 400 pages the main features of England's story from 
earliest times to the present day. The book traces in rapid sur- 
vey the development of the people and institutions of England 
from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the year 191 1, and shows 
by what steps the primitive organization of a semi-tribal people has 
been transformed into the highly complicated political and social 
structure of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. It re- 
tains on a smaller scale the essential characteristics of the larger 
work by the same author, with some additions, chiefly of a 
geographical and biographical character, and many omissions 
of details. 

The author tells a clear and simple story, avoiding technical 
expressions and yet passing over no important feature of the 
history that is necessary for the proper understanding of the 
subject. 

The aim of the book is to be instructive as well as interesting. 
The narrative is made as continuous as possible, that the pupil 
may follow in unbroken sequence the thread of the story. It is 
accompanied with a large number of newly selected illustrations 
and an ample supply of maps and chronological tables. The 
elaborate bibliographies contained in the larger work have been 
omitted and only a small but selective list of the best books in 
brief form has been retained. The history has been brought 
down to date in matters of scholarship as well as chronology, and 
contains many views and statements not to be found in the larger 
work. It is designed as a text-book for half-year, or elementary 
courses, but it might well be used by any reader desiring a 
brief and suggestive account of the main features of England's 
history. 

92 



HISTORY 

Readings in Ancient History : Illustrative Extracts 
from the Sources 
By William Stearns Davis, Professor of Ancient History in the 
University of Minnesota; Introduction by Professor WILLIS Mason 
West. 

Volume I : Greece and the East. i2mo, 375 pages. 
Volume II : Rome and the West. i2mo, 423 pages. 

THIS book sets before the student beginning the study of 
Ancient History a sufficient amount of source material to 
illustrate the important or typical historical facts which will be 
mentioned in his text-book. The volumes are not designed for 
hard study, to be tested scrupulously by minute questioning ; 
they are meant for reading, — a daily companion to any standard 
text-book in Ancient History, — and the boy or girl so using them 
is sure to breathe in more of the atmosphere of the ancient 
world, and to get more taste of the notable literary flavor per- 
vading Greek and Roman history, than would be possible from 
the study of a conventional text-book. 

Volume I contains 125 different selections, of which the follow- 
ing are typical : The Ethics of an Egyptian Nobleman, Inscrip- 
tion ; An Assyrian Palace, Maspero ; The Shield of Achilles, The 
Iliad-, How Glaucus tried to tempt the Delphic Oracle, Herodo- 
tus ; The Ring of Polycrates, Herodotus ; How Leonidas held the 
Pass of Thermopylae, Herodotus; The Last Fight in the Harbor 
of Syracuse, Thucydides ; Anecdotes about Socrates, Diogenes 
Laertius ; How Lysias escaped from the " Thirty," Lysias ; How 
Elephants fought in Hellenistic Armies, Polybius. 

Volume II contains 149 selections, including: Brutus condemns 
his Own Sons to Death, Livy ; How the Plebeians won the Con- 
sulship, Livy ; The Honesty of Roman Officials, Polybius ; The 
Reign of Terror under Sulla, Plutarch ; The Wealth and Habits 
of Crassus the Millionaire, Plutarch ; The Personal Traits of 
Julius Caesar, Suetonius; A Business Panic in Rome, Tacitus; 
The Bill of Fare of a Great Roman Banquet, Macrobius ; How a 
Stoic met Calamity in the Days of Nero, Epictetus ; The Precepts 
of Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius. 

94 



